Pagefind

Static-site search, zero infra

FreeSearch, vector & RAGpagefind.app

What it is

A Rust CLI that crawls your built HTML after a static site generator runs, then writes a chunked search index and JS bundle into your output folder. Browsers fetch only the chunks a query needs — full-text search across a 10,000 page site in under 300kB of total payload.

Why it earns a slot

Zero backend, zero API key, zero monthly bill. Point it at dist/ and you have working site search with prebuilt UI web components — ideal for Astro, Hugo, Eleventy or a Next static export.

Know before you commit

It only indexes what is in your built HTML. Client-rendered content, authenticated pages and data fetched at runtime are invisible to it.

Getting started

npx pagefind --site dist

Field notes

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Pricing snapshot

Free and MIT-licensed. No hosting cost — the index is static files served from the CDN you already pay for.

Snapshots move fast — verify at checkout, and post a field note if it changed.

Drop into your Lovable chat

Evaluate Pagefind (https://pagefind.app) for this project, then use it only if it fits what we are already building.
Context: Static-site search, zero infra. A Rust CLI that crawls your built HTML after a static site generator runs, then writes a chunked search index and JS bundle into your output folder. Browsers fetch only the chunks a query needs — full-text search across a 10,000 page site in under 300kB of total payload.
Reviewer notes (general, not written for this codebase): Zero backend, zero API key, zero monthly bill. Point it at dist/ and you have working site search with prebuilt UI web components — ideal for Astro, Hugo, Eleventy or a Next static export.
Watch out for: It only indexes what is in your built HTML. Client-rendered content, authenticated pages and data fetched at runtime are invisible to it.
Pricing: Free and MIT-licensed. No hosting cost — the index is static files served from the CDN you already pay for.
Setup: npx pagefind --site dist
Rules: treat the notes above as background only. Do not assume a theme, style, layout or feature that is not already in this project — inspect the existing code first and ask me before changing visual direction.

/api/public/tools/pagefind

Neighbourhood

How Pagefind sits against the rest of the atlas — swaps, companions and the tools builders actually save alongside it.

Instead of thisFuse.js MiniSearch Algolia Brave Search API Chroma Cloudflare Vectorize Elastic Cloud Exa Jina AI LanceDB

Also in Search, vector & RAG

Algolia

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Free tier + paidSearch, vector & RAG

Free: 10K search requests/mo + 50K records. Grow: $0.50 per 1K searches + $0.40 per 1K records (10K searches / 100K records included). Grow Plus $1.75 per 1K searches. Elevate with NeuralSearch is custom.

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Brave Search API

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Independent web index search API

PaidSearch, vector & RAG

$5/month in free credits applied automatically; no standing free query allowance. Search $5 per 1K requests at 50 QPS. Answers $4 per 1K requests plus $5 per million input/output tokens at 2 QPS. Enterprise custom.

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Chroma

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Embedded vector DB + cloud

Free tier + paidSearch, vector & RAG

OSS free (Apache 2.0). Chroma Cloud Starter: $0/mo base with $5 free credits, then usage. Team $250/mo + usage with $100 credits. Rates: $2.50 per GiB written, $0.33 per GiB-month stored, $0.0075 per TiB queried, $0.09 per GiB returned.

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Cloudflare Vectorize

developers.cloudflare.com

Serverless vector DB on Workers

Free tier + paidSearch, vector & RAG

Workers Free: 5M stored vector dimensions, 30M queried dimensions/mo. Workers Paid ($5/mo): 10M stored and 50M queried included, then $0.05 per 100M stored dimensions and $0.01 per million queried dimensions.

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