Meilisearch — Instant Search API

Meilisearch is an open-source, Rust-built search engine that returns relevant, typo-tolerant results in under 50 ms. A drop-in self-hosted alternative to Algolia for app search, docs search, e-commerce, and RAG retrieval.

This template deploys Meilisearch wired for Railway:

• Persistent volume at /meili_data — your indexes survive redeploys and restarts.
• Production mode with an auto-generated master key (${{secret(48)}}) — secured by default, never wide open.
• Networking preconfigured — the service boots on port 7700 and the public HTTPS domain routes straight to it.
• Pinned to v1.46.1 for reproducible deploys.

Quick start

1. Deploy the template — it boots in seconds. GET /health returns {"status":"available"}.
2. Grab your key: open the service → Variables → copy MEILI_MASTER_KEY (generated randomly for your deploy).
3. Index and search:

# add documents (creates the index on the fly)
curl -X POST 'https://YOUR-DOMAIN.up.railway.app/indexes/movies/documents' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_MASTER_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '[{"id":1,"title":"Akira"},{"id":2,"title":"Alien"}]'

# typo-tolerant search
curl 'https://YOUR-DOMAIN.up.railway.app/indexes/movies/search?q=akra' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_MASTER_KEY'

Official SDKs available for JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, Rust, Java, and .NET — set the host to your Railway domain and the API key to your master key.

Configuration

Optional: set MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS=true to opt out of anonymous telemetry.

Storage

Search indexes live on the attached volume at /meili_data (5 GB by default — grow it in the service's volume settings as your indexes do). RAM and disk usage scale with index size.