The best Elasticsearch GUIs—and when it’s better to build your own

Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine used widely for handling large data volumes in applications like search engines and e-commerce platforms. While it offers a powerful command-line interface, many users prefer graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for their efficiency and usability, especially when they enhance data security, provide monitoring tools, and support multi-cluster management. Third-party GUIs like Kibana, Grafana, Elasticsearch Head, ElasticHQ, and Elasticvue offer various features, though some are no longer maintained, and the choice between them depends on organizational needs. Alternatively, building a custom GUI offers greater customization and control, with tools like Retool providing a platform to simplify this process by connecting quickly to Elasticsearch and facilitating tailored GUI development.