# Replacing Algolia/Meilisearch/Typesense with Postgres

**URL:** <https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/replacing-algolia-meilisearch-typesense-with-postgres/30356>\
**Category:** Getting Started\
**Created:** [April 20, 2024, 8:04am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/replacing-algolia-meilisearch-typesense-with-postgres/30356 "2024-04-20T08:04:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![alexanderjulmer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/forum.djangoproject.com/alexanderjulmer/32/19973_2.png) [@alexanderjulmer](https://forum.djangoproject.com/u/alexanderjulmer)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2024, 8:04am UTC](https://forum.djangoproject.com/t/replacing-algolia-meilisearch-typesense-with-postgres/30356/1 "2024-04-20T08:04:37Z")

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Hi folks!

I am running an application that manages quite a number of different types of documents (like chapters, statute sections, court decisions, flashcards) and their containers (books, statutes, reporters, decks).

So far I’ve been using [Typesense](https://typesense.org) for indexing and searching, but I think the overall considerations apply to all similar Search-as-a-Service offerings such as Algolia or Meilisearch. The experience is not bad, but even without managing the service it adds overhead such as:

- Synchronizing tables and indexes as only Algolia offers an official Django integration
- Serializing data as they all require JSON documents (more or less)
- Maintaining the integrations
- Cost

Recently, Postgres and especially [pg\_vector](https://github.com/pgvector/pgvector) got some attention – actually so much that even Heroku included it. With that added to full-text search, I am wondering, whether I could actually abandon Typesense and rely entirely on Postgres. There are some advantages that I see in it:

- No synchronisation required as the search is performed on the actual tables
- Works with the Django ORM
- Simpler integration of object-based permissions (we use django-guardian)
- Less maintenance and complexity
- Vector-based search is possible with pg\_vector

I wonder though, whether there might be difficulties that I underestimate:

- Does full-text search work well with long documents: Some of mine might exceed 90.000 characters
- Is there a good way to search multiple tables (of different documents) at once? Maybe async views with async DB requests?
- Will it work well if on tables with hundred thousands of rows?

All your insight is greatly appreciated! 🙂