Is there a size limit for my index/records?

If you signed up for your plan online:

• 10 KB for Pro, Starter, or Free accounts
• 20 KB for legacy (Essential and Plus)

If you signed up for your plan with an Account Executive, please refer to your service order for your plan’s limits.

We process your JSON data file in the following way:

1. We turn the file into a string.
2. We remove extra spaces (spaces that are outside of key/value strings and not syntactically necessary).
3. We turn it back into a JSON file. The record size limit is based on the size of this final JSON file.

You’ll get the Record is too big error if you try to index a record bigger than the limit.

There are a few solutions to overcome this limitation:

1. If you’re using our WordPress guide, read our guide on splitting large records using WordPress
2. If you’re using our Laravel guide, read how to split large records using Laravel
3. For any other implementation, follow our guide on how to use distinct to index large records
4. Not all attributes of your objects have be stored inside Algolia. For example, you can store only attributes that are displayed on your search page. For a page containing more details, you could make a request to your own database and request the information to show it.
5. Finally, make sure to read our documentation on structuring your data

There are three reasons for this limitation:

1. It increases latency: big objects with a lot of unnecessary information take a long time to be uploaded/downloaded
2. In most cases, having bigger objects is a sign that you’re not using Algolia at its full capacity:
   • Having very big chunks of text is usually bad for relevance, because most objects end-up having a lot of similar words, and they will match with a lot of irrelevant queries.
   • It’s often better to de-duplicate big objects into several smaller ones
3. The pricing for legacy (Essential and Plus) is based on your number of records.

If you need to search for bigger objects, and you are on our Enterprise plan or wish to upgrade your plan, please contact us at enterprise@algolia.com and we can increase your limit but the best way is to structure your data differently.