For what it's worth, we do around ~5.1k queries on App Search and pay something like $200.

Looking at Algolia (which we didn't go with because it was too expensive), the cost would be about even right now ($1.50 premium * 6). However, that doesn't include the elastic or kibana instance we get at the moment.

Hopefully the cost doesn't grow too sharply.

How come you're paying $200 for 5.1k queries on App Search? 5k doesn't seem like a big number so I imagine the lower tier plans/configs like the $20-30 plans should be enough right? Right now I have the lowest configuration and I pay $25/month.

Woah. Err I don't handle billing but it looks like we got App Search through Elastic and it comes with the entire ELK stack behind it.

I know they are moving App Search to some kind of Elastic Enterprise service, perhaps we're dealing with that instead?

We use the analytics, clicks, and suggestion API's - idk if those are included at the base level or not.

I don't get why algolia exists and why people pay for it

They have a useful list of feature that you can look at: https://www.algolia.com/products/search/

It's basically a service that you can use so users can search objects in your database, a bit like Google but just for your website or application.

Isn't it exactly what a managed Elasticsearch does ?

Yes but vastly faster, and requires less setup.

Where you using a different search solution previously? What was it?

We were using Google Custom Search. So Algolia is a big upgrade.