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Full-text search is the core capability of Meilisearch. When a user types a query, Meilisearch scans indexed documents and returns results ranked by relevance using a multi-criteria sorting algorithm.

Key features

  • Typo tolerance: automatically handles misspellings using Levenshtein distance
  • Prefix search: returns results as the user types, matching partial words
  • Multi-criteria ranking: combines multiple ranking rules (typo, proximity, attribute, exactness, and more) to determine result order
  • Customizable relevancy: configure ranking rules, searchable attributes, stop words, synonyms, and more to fine-tune results for your use case
Full-text search works best when users search with keywords or short phrases and expect results ranked by textual relevance. If your users search with natural language questions or need results based on meaning rather than exact terms, consider hybrid search or conversational search.

Next steps

Getting started

Try your first search query

Configure relevancy

Learn how ranking works and how to customize it

Hybrid search

Combine full-text with semantic search

How-to guides

Configure search behavior for your use case