---
title: Discovery plugins
description: Discovery plugins extend Elasticsearch by adding new seed hosts providers that can be used to extend the cluster formation module. The core discovery...
url: https://www.elastic.co/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/reference/elasticsearch/plugins/discovery-plugins
products:
  - Elasticsearch
---

# Discovery plugins
Discovery plugins extend Elasticsearch by adding new seed hosts providers that can be used to extend the [cluster formation module](https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-builder/docs/3016/deploy-manage/distributed-architecture/discovery-cluster-formation).

## Core discovery plugins

The core discovery plugins are:
<definitions>
  <definition term="EC2 discovery">
    The EC2 discovery plugin uses the [AWS API](https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-java) to identify the addresses of seed hosts.
  </definition>
  <definition term="Azure Classic discovery">
    The Azure Classic discovery plugin uses the Azure Classic API to identify the addresses of seed hosts.
  </definition>
  <definition term="GCE discovery">
    The Google Compute Engine discovery plugin uses the GCE API to identify the addresses of seed hosts.
  </definition>
</definitions>