Elastic Cloud vs AWS OpenSearch Serverless vs Aiven for OpenSearch: Real Managed Search Cost at 10 TB in 2026
Prices checked: October 2, 2026.
DIRECT ANSWER
Short answer
At 10 TB of retained search data, storage is the cheap part and compute is the bill:
- Elastic Cloud Serverless: 10 TB retained costs $470/month at Elastic's lowest listed rate ($0.047/GB-month). Compute adds $1,343–$5,373/month across the scenarios below. Total: about $1,800–$5,800.
- AWS OpenSearch Serverless: storage is only about $200–$240/month. Compute runs $1,752–$7,008/month across 10–40 OCUs at $0.24 per OCU-hour. Total: about $2,000–$7,250.
- Aiven for OpenSearch: flat all-inclusive plans. Business (3 nodes) goes up to 15.36 TB and Premium (6–15 nodes) up to 76.8 TB, starting at $275+ and $1,140+. The exact price of a ~10 TB plan depends on the cloud and region you choose, and Aiven shows it in its plan selector rather than as one published number (QUOTE-ONLY at this size).
Serverless prices scale with how hard you query and ingest, not with how much you store. Aiven prices scale with cluster size, and network, backups and maintenance are included.
Native billing units
| Service | Compute unit | Compute price | Storage | Other | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elastic Cloud Serverless (Elasticsearch) | VCU-hour, split into ingest, search and ML | Ingest from $0.14; search from $0.09; ML from $0.07 per VCU-hour | From $0.047 per GB retained per month | Egress from $0.05/GB | OFFICIAL (lowest regional rates) |
| Elastic Cloud Hosted | Provisioned resources (RAM/storage per hour) | Calculator-based | Included in node size | Subscription tier (Standard → Enterprise) changes the rate | QUOTE-ONLY (calculator) |
| AWS OpenSearch Serverless (us-east-1) | OCU-hour, separate indexing and search OCUs | $0.24 per OCU-hour, per-second billing | Billed per GB-month of hot storage (shown on the pricing page between $0.02 and $0.024) | NextGen collections scale to zero after 10 min idle; classic collections bill at least 2 OCUs with redundancy | OFFICIAL / rate shown inconsistently |
| Aiven for OpenSearch | Fixed plan (VMs bundled) | Business from $275+/month (3 nodes, 240 GB–15.36 TB); Premium from $1,140+/month (6–15 nodes, 1.05–76.8 TB) | Included in plan; extra storage is an add-on | Network, backups and maintenance included | OFFICIAL (ranges); 10 TB plan price QUOTE-ONLY |
Elastic's VCU and AWS's OCU aren't the same size. Use the scenarios below for the shape of the bill, then load-test with your own queries.
Scenario costs at 10 TB (ILLUSTRATIVE)
The same 10 TB (10,000 GB) retained, at three activity levels:
Elastic Cloud Serverless
| Activity | Ingest VCUs | Search VCUs | Compute | Storage | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light | 8 | 8 | $1,343.20 | $470 | $1,813.20 |
| Moderate | 16 | 16 | $2,686.40 | $470 | $3,156.40 |
| Heavy | 32 | 32 | $5,372.80 | $470 | $5,842.80 |
The compute math is VCUs × rate × 730 hours. For example, 8 × $0.14 × 730 = $817.60 for ingest and 8 × $0.09 × 730 = $525.60 for search.
AWS OpenSearch Serverless
| Activity | Total OCUs (indexing + search) | Compute | Storage at $0.024 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light | 10 | $1,752 | $240 | $1,992 |
| Moderate | 20 | $3,504 | $240 | $3,744 |
| Heavy | 40 | $7,008 | $240 | $7,248 |
At the lower $0.02/GB-month storage rate, each total drops by $40.
Aiven for OpenSearch
A ~10 TB dataset with one replica needs about 20 TB of cluster disk. That's beyond the Business tier's 15.36 TB, which pushes you into Premium. With no replica, it fits Business. The monthly price is fixed whatever you query or ingest, and includes networking and backups. Get the exact figure from Aiven's plan selector for your cloud and region.
Where the cost catches you
- Replicas double storage on clusters, not on serverless. On Aiven (and on Elastic Cloud Hosted), 10 TB with one replica means paying for about 20 TB of disk. On both serverless options, the per-GB storage rate is applied to the data you retain.
- Search spikes become a bill on serverless. A dashboard refresh storm or an AI agent firing thousands of queries scales search VCUs/OCUs up, and you pay for every hour they run.
- Classic OpenSearch Serverless minimums. Classic collections with redundancy bill at least 2 OCUs, $350.40/month, even when idle. NextGen collections scale to zero.
- Elastic's rates are floors. The pricing page lists "as low as" values. Some regions and clouds cost more.
- Egress. Elastic charges from $0.05/GB for data transfer out. On Aiven, networking is included in the plan.
- Vector search changes the math. Vector indexes are RAM-heavy. On serverless, that means more compute units. On Aiven, it means larger plans, not more disk.
Which one fits
- Mostly-cold 10 TB with light querying (logs, archives): Elastic Cloud Serverless or OpenSearch Serverless NextGen, where cheap storage dominates and compute stays small.
- Steady, heavy search traffic with a fixed budget: Aiven. A flat plan beats paying per compute-hour once the cluster is busy all day.
- Already on AWS, want IAM/VPC integration and scale-to-zero: OpenSearch Serverless NextGen collections.
- Need Elastic-only features (ES|QL, Elastic Observability/Security solutions): Elastic Cloud. Choose Serverless for spiky load and Hosted for predictable load.
Assumptions
- 10,000 GB of retained data; scenario compute levels held constant for 730 hours/month
- Elastic lowest listed regional rates; AWS us-east-1
- Excludes egress, snapshots outside the plan, PrivateLink and taxes
Pricing sources
- Elasticsearch Serverless pricing: https://www.elastic.co/pricing/serverless-search
- Elastic Cloud pricing overview: https://www.elastic.co/pricing
- Amazon OpenSearch Service pricing: https://aws.amazon.com/opensearch-service/pricing/
- Aiven for OpenSearch pricing: https://aiven.io/pricing/opensearch
- Aiven for OpenSearch plans reference: https://aiven.io/docs/products/opensearch/reference/plans-pricing