Ecommerce site search speed decides whether search-as-you-type keeps up with the shopper. We tested 6 site search vendors on 55 live shops to measure how fast their search is, and how consistent it stays from query to query.
Key takeaways
Across the six vendors, the search itself (API + render) took between 53 ms (Algolia) and 213 ms (Luigi's Box) at the median.
Aqurate Search runs the search and shows results in 72 ms (median, API + render), the second-lowest of the six vendors.
95% of Aqurate searches finished in 116 ms or less (API + render), the lowest p95 of the six vendors.
The Aqurate search API alone answers in about 60 ms in the browser.
Tested in a real browser on 55 live shops, from Bucharest, on 4 November 2026.
Search-as-you-type only works if results keep up with the shopper. A pop-up that lags breaks the flow between typing and clicking a product.
Averages hide the problem. A search tool can be fast on most queries and slow on a few. Shoppers notice the slow ones.
So we measured two things: how fast the search is, and how steady it stays from query to query.
At the median, the search itself took between 53 ms and 213 ms, depending on the vendor. This is the API call plus drawing the results in the pop-up.
Aqurate Search returns and renders results in 72 ms at the median, the second-lowest of the six vendors after Algolia (53 ms).
Medians ranged from 53 ms to 213 ms. On the slower searches (p95), the range was wider: from 116 ms to 525 ms.
|
Vendor |
Shops tested |
API + render, median |
API + render, p95 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Algolia |
9 |
53 ms |
143 ms |
|
Aqurate |
11 |
72 ms |
116 ms |
|
Doofinder |
9 |
83 ms |
140 ms |
|
Nosto |
7 |
91 ms |
290 ms |
|
Prefixbox |
10 |
157 ms |
265 ms |
|
Luigi's Box |
9 |
213 ms |
525 ms |
How to read this table: Median is the typical search: half of searches were faster, half slower. p95 means 95 out of 100 searches finished within this time. Only the slowest 5 took longer.
Comparing vendors in more detail? See Aqurate vs Algolia, Aqurate vs Doofinder, Aqurate vs Nosto and Aqurate vs Luigi's Box.
p95 is the time within which 95 out of 100 searches finish. It shows how slow the slow searches get. A low p95 means few slow outliers.
For Aqurate, 95 out of 100 searches showed results in 116 ms or less. For Luigi's Box, the same 95 took up to 525 ms.
Aqurate's p95 for API + render is 116 ms. That is lower than every other vendor in the test:
Doofinder: 140 ms
Algolia: 143 ms
Prefixbox: 265 ms
Nosto: 290 ms
Luigi's Box: 525 ms
Aqurate also varied least from shop to shop. Across its 11 shops, the median time from last keystroke to results sat in a 95% range of 270-290 ms, the narrowest range of the six vendors. That figure includes the widget's wait after the last keystroke, explained in the methodology below.
In practice: shoppers get the same fast search on almost every query, not a fast median with slow exceptions.
The Aqurate search API answers in about 60 ms (61 ms median), measured in the shopper's browser, network included.
Learn more about Aqurate Search.
Methodology
Shops: 55 live B2C shops across 6 vendors: Aqurate 11, Prefixbox 10, Algolia 9, Doofinder 9, Luigi's Box 9, Nosto 7. Mostly Central and Eastern Europe. Shops are anonymised.
Setup: a real Chromium browser on a laptop in Bucharest, desktop view, fresh browser with no cache or cookies on every run.
Queries: 5 product queries per shop in the shop's own language, typed at shopper speed, 3 runs per shop.
What we timed: the search-as-you-type pop-up only, not full results pages. All timings on one in-page clock.
API + render: time to results minus the widget's wait after the last keystroke. It isolates the search itself. The wait is a widget setting and differs from shop to shop, even within one vendor.
Median and p95: the median is the middle value. The p95 is the time 95% of searches stay under, so it captures slow outliers.
Calculation: each shop counts once, as its median. Vendor figures are the median of their shops.
Date: 4 November 2026.
Every benchmark has limits. These are ours:
One location, one day. All runs were from Bucharest on 4 November 2026. Vendors with servers far from Romania look slower here than they would for their own local shoppers.
Shops differ. Catalogue size, theme and hosting vary. Using medians across 7 to 11 shops per vendor reduces this, but doesn't remove it.
Short queries only. 5 product terms per shop. No typos or long phrases.
Small samples for some vendors. Nosto had 7 shops, including 2 on SearchNode, which Nosto sells as Nosto Search.
In our test of 6 vendors on 55 live shops, the search itself (API + render) took between 53 and 213 ms at the median.
72 ms median to run the search and render results in the pop-up, and about 60 ms for the search API alone, measured in a real browser on 11 live shops.
Algolia had the lowest median (53 ms), with Aqurate second at 72 ms. Aqurate had the lowest p95 of the six vendors, at 116 ms.
p95 is the time within which 95 out of 100 searches finish. It shows how fast search stays on the slower queries, not just on a typical one.
Total time includes a wait after the last keystroke that each widget sets differently, often per shop. API + render isolates the search engine and the display, which is what the vendor's technology controls.
Aqurate, Algolia, Doofinder, Luigi's Box, Nosto and Prefixbox, on 55 live shops in total.
Yes. All tests ran from Bucharest, so vendors with servers closer to Romania have an advantage.
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