Add plugins and extensions

Plugins extend the core functionality of Elasticsearch. There are many suitable plugins, including:

• Discovery plugins, such as the cloud AWS plugin that allows discovering nodes on EC2 instances.
• Analysis plugins, to provide analyzers targeted at languages other than English.
• Scripting plugins, to provide additional scripting languages.

Plugins can come from different sources: the official ones created or at least maintained by Elastic, community-sourced plugins from other users, and plugins that you provide. Some of the official plugins are always provided with our service, and can be [enabled per deployment](/reference/elasticsearch-plugins/cloud/ec-adding-elastic-plugins.md).

There are two ways to add plugins to a deployment in Elasticsearch Service:

• [Enable one of the official plugins already available in Elasticsearch Service](/reference/elasticsearch-plugins/cloud/ec-adding-elastic-plugins.md).
• [Upload a custom plugin and then enable it per deployment](/reference/elasticsearch-plugins/cloud/ec-custom-bundles.md).

Custom plugins can include the official Elasticsearch plugins not provided with Elasticsearch Service, any of the community-sourced plugins, or plugins that you write yourself. Uploading custom plugins is available only to Gold, Platinum, and Enterprise subscriptions. For more information, check [Upload custom plugins and bundles](/reference/elasticsearch-plugins/cloud/ec-custom-bundles.md).

To learn more about the official and community-sourced plugins, refer to Elasticsearch Plugins and Integrations.

For a detailed guide with examples of using the Elasticsearch Service API to create, get information about, update, and delete extensions and plugins, check [Managing plugins and extensions through the API](/reference/elasticsearch-plugins/cloud/ec-plugins-guide.md).

Plugins are not supported for Kibana. To learn more, check Restrictions for Elasticsearch and Kibana plugins.