Get Elasticsearch running for search

Elasticsearch is at the core of every Elastic deployment type. The deployment type you choose determines who manages the infrastructure, scaling, and upgrades, and how usage is billed. This page briefly introduces the deployment types you can use to get Elasticsearch running quickly, and points you to resources that compare them in detail.

  1. Choose a deployment and get Elasticsearch running

    Get Elasticsearch running in a few minutes.

    • Elastic Cloud Serverless: Elastic automatically scales and upgrades the project. Projects are versionless, so you always get the latest features.

      Serverless has two project types optimized for different search workloads. Choose the one that matches your data and use case:

    • Elastic Cloud Hosted: You size, scale, and upgrade the cluster yourself, and you select the hardware profile it runs on. The cluster runs a specific Elastic Stack version. Sign up for a 14-day free trial.

    • Local development: Get started quickly with Elasticsearch and Kibana in Docker for local development and testing.
    Tip

    These are the fastest ways to get Elasticsearch running for search. Elastic offers additional deployment types for production workloads on your own infrastructure.

    For more detail on the options listed here, and to compare all deployment types across factors like data residency, compliance, feature availability, and infrastructure control, refer to the full list of deployment options and the detailed feature comparison.

  2. Try a quickstart

    Once you have Elasticsearch running, try a quickstart tutorial:

  3. Next step

    After you have selected and started a deployment, get connected: find your endpoint and create an API key in Get your Elasticsearch endpoint and API key.