# Sonic

> MPL-2.0 tiny Rust search backend, an Elasticsearch-lite

**Category:** Rust  
**Pricing:** open-source  
**URL:** https://crates.io/crates/sonic-server  
**GitHub:** https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic  
**Added:** 2026-10-18

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## The Hook

Sonic is a fast, lightweight, schema-less search backend written in Rust: you push text with an object ID, query it, and get back IDs to look up in your own database.

## What's Good

MPL-2.0 (valeriansaliou/sonic), release v1.10.2 (2026-10-05). It normalises natural-language queries, auto-completes and ranks results, and the project's benchmarks show microsecond-range responses with about 30 MB of RAM under load. Clients exist for many languages over its simple TCP protocol. Used in production by Crisp. ★~21.4k.

## The Catch

It is an identifier index, not a document store: it returns IDs, not documents, highlights or facets. No vector or hybrid search. MPL-2.0 is file-level copyleft if you modify Sonic itself. For rich search UX, Meilisearch or Typesense do more.

## Verdict

The lightest way to add full-text search when you only need IDs back.