1
Push your data
Send records to the Sprigr REST API. Products, articles, documentation, job listings, any structured JSON. This is the only time your data touches a server.
Zero API Calls. Zero Server Costs. Instant Search.
Sprigr compiles your search index into a blazingly fast client-side search engine. Users search locally in the browser. No per-query fees, no infrastructure to manage, no servers to scale. Your search cost is the same at 10 searches per month or 10 million.
Start Free — No Credit CardThe cost problem with API-based search
Traditional search providers charge per query. Every time a user types a character into your search box, that is an API call. With as-you-type search, a single user searching for “running shoes” generates 13 API calls, one for each keystroke. Multiply that by thousands of daily users and the costs add up fast.
At 100,000 searches per month, Algolia costs around $50. Manageable. But search usage grows with your traffic. At 1 million searches per month, you are looking at roughly $500. At 10 million, the bill climbs into the thousands. And these are just search queries. They do not include indexing operations, analytics, or premium features like A/B testing and personalization.
Worse, per-query pricing creates perverse incentives. You start debouncing search to reduce costs, which makes the experience slower. You limit autocomplete suggestions. You disable search on low-value pages. You are optimizing for your bill instead of your users.
Self-hosted alternatives like Typesense or Meilisearch eliminate per-query costs but introduce infrastructure costs. You need servers, load balancers, monitoring, and an ops team. A production Typesense cluster on AWS starts around $200 per month and scales up from there. You trade one cost for another.
Sprigr takes a fundamentally different approach. Search runs in the browser. There is no server to pay for, no API to call, and no per-query billing. Your cost is a flat monthly fee for data indexing and hosting. Whether your users run 10 searches or 10 million, the cost does not change.
How zero-API search works
Three steps from your data to instant, serverless search.
2
Compile to a client-side engine
Sprigr builds a compact binary search index optimized for in-browser execution. A 10,000-record catalog compresses to 1–5 MB for keyword search. Indexes with semantic search enabled are larger. The index is served from a global edge network.
3
Search locally
The lightweight search engine loads in the user’s browser and searches the index locally. Every keystroke produces results in under 10 ms. No API call. No server. No cost per query.
Search cost comparison
Per-query pricing punishes growth. Flat pricing rewards it.
| Monthly searches | Algolia | Typesense Cloud | Sprigr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | Free tier | ~$30/mo (cluster) | $0 per query |
| 100,000 | ~$50/mo | ~$30/mo (cluster) | $0 per query |
| 1,000,000 | ~$500/mo | ~$100/mo (cluster) | $0 per query |
| 10,000,000 | ~$3,000+/mo | ~$500+/mo (cluster) | $0 per query |
| Cold starts | Yes (serverless) | No (dedicated) | No (already in browser) |
| Rate limits | Yes | Depends on cluster size | None (runs locally) |
| Infrastructure | Managed | Managed or self-hosted | None (browser only) |
Performance without compromise
Eliminating API calls does not just save money. It makes search fundamentally faster and more reliable.
No cold starts
Serverless search functions take 50–500 ms to cold start. Sprigr’s search engine is already loaded in the browser. The first search query is just as fast as the thousandth, under 10 ms, every time. There is no waiting for a function to spin up, no Lambda initialization, no container warm-up.
No rate limits
API-based search enforces rate limits to protect server resources. When your site gets a traffic spike (a product launch, a viral post, a Black Friday rush) rate limits throttle your search right when it matters most. Sprigr has no rate limits because there is no server to protect. Each user runs search independently in their browser.
Works offline
Once the search engine and index are cached, search works without any network connection. Users on planes, trains, or spotty mobile connections can still search your content. This is critical for progressive web apps, mobile apps, and documentation sites used in areas with unreliable internet.
Frequently asked questions
How does Sprigr search work without API calls?
You push your data to Sprigr via a REST API during indexing. Sprigr compiles that data into a compact compiled binary search index. When a user visits your site, the search engine and index are loaded into the browser. Every search query runs locally in the browser. No API call is made for search. The only network request is the initial load of the search engine and index, which is cached by the browser for subsequent visits.
Is there a limit to how many searches users can run?
No. Since searches run in the user’s browser, there is no server to rate-limit. Users can search as fast as they can type, and every keystroke produces results in under 10 milliseconds. There are no per-query costs, no daily quotas, and no throttling. The only limit is the user’s device performance, which on modern hardware is effectively unlimited for search workloads.
What happens if my site gets a traffic spike?
Nothing changes for search performance. Each user’s searches run in their own browser, so search scales linearly with users at zero marginal cost. The search engine is served from a global edge network across 300+ locations, so the initial load is fast regardless of traffic volume. No auto-scaling, no capacity planning, no emergency infrastructure bills.
How large can my search index be?
The practical limit for client-side search is around 50,000–100,000 records, depending on record size. A typical 10,000-record product catalog compresses to 1–5 MB of keyword index data. Indexes with semantic search enabled include vector embeddings and are larger. Large indexes are automatically split into parallel-loaded shards for fast startup. For very large datasets, Sprigr also provides a server-side REST API as a fallback.
Does Sprigr work offline?
Yes. Once the search engine and search index are loaded and cached by the browser, all search functionality works without any network connection. This makes Sprigr ideal for progressive web apps, mobile apps, documentation sites, and any scenario where connectivity is unreliable. Search results, filtering, and highlighting all work identically offline.
Stop paying per search query
Free forever. No credit card required. No per-query fees, ever.
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