Meilisearch Indexing Slow

How to fix it

Try these in order — the most common fix is first.

1. 1. Configure settings before adding documents

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   1. Set searchable, filterable, sortable attributes and ranking rules on an empty index
   2. Then add documents so they are indexed only once
   Did this fix it? Yes No

2. 2. Slim down documents

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   1. Remove fields that are not searchable, filterable, sortable or displayed
   2. Restrict searchableAttributes to what you need
   3. Split very long content into smaller documents
   Did this fix it? Yes No

3. 3. Send larger batches

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   1. Two batches of 50,000 documents are faster than four of 25,000
   2. You don't need to wait for each task before sending the next
   3. Compress payloads with gzip, deflate or br
   Did this fix it? Yes No

Symptoms

Document additions take minutes or hours; search results lag behind your data.

Why it happens

• Changing settings after documents are added triggers a full reindex
• Large documents or too many searchable attributes
• Many small batches instead of fewer large ones
• Too small a server for the dataset

This guide also covers

• meilisearch indexing slow
• meilisearch slow indexing large dataset
• meilisearch reindex takes forever

The same problem in other apps

All slow, laggy or resource-hungry guides →

• Typesense Out of Memory (OOM) and RAM Sizing (Typesense)
• Algolia Search Slow or High Latency (Algolia)
• Elasticsearch High JVM Memory Pressure and Out of Memory (Elasticsearch)

Other Meilisearch errors

• Meilisearch Tasks Stuck on Enqueued
• Meilisearch Documents Not Showing Up
• Meilisearch Primary Key Error
• Meilisearch Filter Not Working (Attribute Not Filterable)
• Meilisearch Invalid API Key / Missing Authorization Header
• Meilisearch Database Version Incompatible After Upgrade
• Meilisearch Disk Usage Keeps Growing / No Space Left on Device
• Meilisearch High Memory Usage