Fibosearch (free) – faster, better for WooCommerce, but custom fields require paid version. Best Premium AJAX Search Plugin SearchWP + Live Search add-on – most flexible, best for custom fields, supports PDFs, comments, custom tables. Starts at $99/year.
For sites with >5,000 posts, indexed search is mandatory. Real-time will cause timeouts. 3. Database Impact (Benchmark Example) Tested on 50k posts, shared hosting (2GB RAM, 2 CPU): wordpress search plugin ajax
$query = new WP_Query([ 's' => $s, 'posts_per_page' => 10, 'post_type' => ['post', 'page', 'product'] ]); Fibosearch (free) – faster, better for WooCommerce, but