Development

Typesense

Typesense — C++ search engine: typo-tolerant, faceted, and vector search via REST API. Single container, under 150 MB RAM, GPLv3 licence.

Official documentation

About Typesense

Typesense (GPLv3, 26 k+ GitHub stars, v29.0) is an open-source search engine written in C++. It exposes a clean REST API for indexing and querying your data with typo tolerance, faceted filtering, vector/semantic search, and millisecond response times — all in a single Docker container with no JVM, no Elasticsearch cluster setup, no shard tuning.

Unlike Meilisearch (its closest peer), Typesense is optimised for lower latency at higher concurrency and supports multi-vector search natively, making it well-suited for hybrid keyword-plus-embedding search pipelines. The two engines coexist in many architectures: Meilisearch for its ease of use on smaller datasets, Typesense for strict p99 latency requirements or semantic ranking.

Deployed on a ServOrbit VPS, Typesense becomes the search layer of your application — whether you are building a multilingual product catalogue, a documentation portal with instant search, or a semantic search feature powered by embeddings from OpenAI or a local model. Official client libraries cover JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Dart, Java and Swift.

The REST API is compatible with the Instantsearch.js / react-instantsearch family, so adding a polished, Algolia-like search UI to your front-end requires only a few lines of configuration.

What gets installed

Ready when the VPS starts

Compatible OS
Ubuntu 24.04
Application
Typesense
Tech stack
DockerC++
Minimum RAM
1 GB (4 GB for large corpora or vector search)
Minimum CPU
1 vCPU
Default port
8108
Access
root over SSH

Key features

  • Typo tolerance with fuzzy matching — a query for 'Mohamad' finds 'Mohamed' without any dictionary or configuration
  • Faceted search and filtering — filter by category, price, tag or any field alongside the full-text query, with live counts
  • Built-in vector / semantic search — index embedding vectors alongside text fields and run hybrid keyword + ANN queries natively
  • C++ engine with in-memory indexes and RAFT persistence — no JVM, no garbage collection pauses, designed for strict SLA requirements
  • Scoped API keys — generate search-only, index-specific or rate-limited keys to secure front-end bundles without exposing the admin key
  • GPLv3 licence, 26 k+ GitHub stars, actively maintained — weekly releases, official SDKs for 9 languages

When to use this solution?

Product catalogue search

Index your products with price, category and stock attributes. Users get instant, typo-tolerant results as they type, with facets to narrow by brand or price range — all from your VPS, with no per-query fee and no data leaving your infrastructure.

Documentation and knowledge base instant search

Crawl your Markdown docs, Ghost blog or Docusaurus site into Typesense and expose a search-as-you-type bar. The multilingual tokeniser handles Arabic, French and English natively, making it ideal for bilingual MENA-targeted documentation.

Hybrid keyword + semantic search

Store OpenAI or local-model embeddings alongside your text fields and run hybrid queries that combine BM25 keyword ranking with ANN vector similarity — all without a separate vector database. Typesense merges both scores with a single API call.

Guide

Deploy Typesense on your VPS

  1. Order the ServOrbit VPS

    Typesense idles under 150 MB RAM for typical corpora; a 1 GB VPS is enough to get started. Provisioning installs Docker on the Ubuntu image and prepares the stack.

  2. Deploy from the Marketplace

    From your ServOrbit client area, go to Marketplace → Development → Typesense → Deploy. A single typesense/typesense:29.0 container starts with a named volume for /data and a randomly generated admin API key shown in your client area.

  3. Sign in for the first time

    Typesense has no login screen: it is an API-driven search engine protected by an API key. Use the key provided in your client area as the X-TYPESENSE-API-KEY header on every request, for example: curl -H 'X-TYPESENSE-API-KEY: <your-key>' http://127.0.0.1:8108/health

  4. Reach the API from your applications

    The REST API listens on port 8108, published on the loopback of the VPS. Expose it via an Nginx or Caddy vhost on your domain over HTTPS for remote applications, or use an SSH tunnel for admin sessions: ssh -L 8108:127.0.0.1:8108 root@<your-vps-ip>, then http://localhost:8108.

  5. Index your first data and query it

    Create a collection and add documents: curl -X POST 'http://127.0.0.1:8108/collections' -H 'X-TYPESENSE-API-KEY: <key>' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"name":"products","fields":[{"name":"name","type":"string"},{"name":"price","type":"float"}]}'. Then search: curl 'http://127.0.0.1:8108/collections/products/documents/search?q=vps&query_by=name' -H 'X-TYPESENSE-API-KEY: <key>'.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about Typesense

← Back to DevelopmentAll applications
Both are self-hosted, open-source search engines with typo tolerance and a REST API. Typesense (C++, GPLv3) is optimised for strict low-latency requirements and includes native vector / semantic search. Meilisearch (Rust, MIT) has a simpler setup and is often preferred for smaller datasets or teams that want zero configuration. If you already use Meilisearch, you can run Typesense alongside it for workloads that need hybrid keyword+vector ranking or strict low-latency requirements.

Embed the deploy button

Maintaining a project that uses Typesense? This button lets your readers deploy it on a VPS in one click, without reading Docker documentation.

Deploy Typesense on ServOrbit
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The button points to a VPS order with the template preselected. The image is served from servorbit.com — nothing to host on your side.

Complementary solutions

Development

Meilisearch

Self-hosted full-text search engine: add instant, typo-tolerant search to your applications with a simple REST API — 57 k GitHub stars, single Rust container, under 100 MB RAM.

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