Elastic Cloud Serverless
Elastic Cloud Serverless: A serverless Elasticsearch service for teams that want managed operations and usage-based billing. Ranked #2 of 24 in Elasticsearch Hosting by our editors (9.2/10); pricing: 14-day trial; best for teams preferring serverless usage-based Elasticsearch.
At a glance
- Editor score9.2 / 10
- Pricing14-day trial
- Best forTeams preferring serverless usage-based Elasticsearch
- Free planNo
- Paid from$0.05/GB/mo
- Kibana includedYes
- Founded2012 · Amsterdam, Netherlands and Mountain View, California, United States
- Facts checked21 Sep 2026
Where it wins
- Automatic scaling, upgrades, backups, and business continuity management
- Kibana included with search, analytics, logging, and security workflows
- Separate metering for ingest, search, ML, storage, and egress
Where it doesn't
- No free plan, with a 14-day free trial instead
- Consumption-based billing can require close usage monitoring
- Availability is limited to selected AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud regions
Our verdict on Elastic Cloud Serverless
Elastic Cloud Serverless provides fully managed serverless Elasticsearch projects for search, analytics, vector workloads, logging, and security use cases. It is aimed at teams that want Elasticsearch and Kibana without provisioning or operating clusters. Projects expose APIs for management and data access, support search across linked projects, and run in selected AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud regions. SSO is included, and the service lists 24/7 support.
Its strongest distinction is the managed serverless operating model. Elastic handles infrastructure, automatic resource scaling based on workload, upgrades, backups, and business continuity management. Kibana is included as a core Elastic Stack component, while the Elastic Cloud API supports project management. The separate compute and object-storage architecture fits workloads that need persistent retention alongside variable indexing or search demand. Machine-learning support covers inference, ELSER workloads, and machine-learning jobs, while search compute also covers alerting, aggregations, transforms, and geospatial queries.
Pricing is divided by consumption rather than a conventional fixed plan. Ingest costs $0.14 USD per VCU per hour for data indexing, Search costs $0.09 USD per VCU per hour for user searches and related workloads, and Machine Learning costs $0.07 USD per VCU per hour. Storage & Retention costs $0.047 USD per GB retained per month, and Egress costs $0.05 USD per GB transferred per month. Billing is monthly, with a 14-day free trial and no free plan. Choose Elastic Cloud Serverless if automatic operations and separate usage meters match your workload; consider an alternative if fixed-plan pricing or broader regional availability is more important.
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Elastic Cloud Serverless pricing
All 5 Elastic Cloud Serverless plans and prices →
Elastic Cloud Serverless fact sheet
| Free plan | No |
|---|---|
| Paid from | $0.05/GB/mo |
| Kibana included | Yes |
| Deployment model | Serverless |
| Autoscaling | Yes |
| Managed backups | Yes |
| SSO support | Yes |
| Support level | 24/7 |
| Free trial | 14 days |
| Deployment | Cloud |
| Platforms | Web |
| Compliance & security | SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SSO/SAML |
| Support | Email, Phone, Tickets, Community, Docs · 24/7 |
| Built for | Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise (editorial estimate) |
| Pricing | 14-day trial (source) |
| Website | elastic.co |
| Facts checked | 21 Sep 2026 |
Alternatives to Elastic Cloud Serverless
- Elastic Cloud HostedA mature managed search stack with autoscaling, Kibana, and tiered support.9.4
- BonsaiCost-conscious managed search hosting with dashboards, backups, failover, and cloud deployment options.9.0
- Tencent Cloud Elasticsearch ServiceA flexible managed Elasticsearch service with strong Tencent Cloud ecosystem fit.8.8
See all Elastic Cloud Serverless alternatives →
Elastic Cloud Serverless vs the competition
- Elastic Cloud Serverless vs Elastic Cloud Hosted
- Elastic Cloud Serverless vs Bonsai
- Elastic Cloud Serverless vs Tencent Cloud Elasticsearch Service
- Elastic Cloud Serverless vs Logit.io Hosted Elasticsearch
- Elastic Cloud Serverless vs Alibaba Cloud Elasticsearch
- Elastic Cloud Serverless vs Huawei Cloud Cloud Search Service
Compare Elastic Cloud Serverless with any tool side by side →
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Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
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