Winnow compared to Pagefind

Pagefind is a fully static search library. It runs after your static site build, produces a static search bundle, and gives you prebuilt UI components and browser-side filtering without hosted infrastructure. Winnow is a hosted crawl-and-index service. It is designed for sites that change outside a static build pipeline, including public CMS sites and sites with PDFs.

Good fit

Choose Winnow if your site is not fully static, if editors publish content outside deployments, or if you want search without adding a build step. It is also the better fit if you want hosted analytics, continuous crawling, PDF search, and optional AI answers on top of the search experience.

Tradeoffs

Pagefind may fit better if your site is already generated as static HTML and you want the search index built locally as part of deployment. In that situation, Pagefind is elegantly simple. You avoid hosted search infrastructure and keep the whole system close to your static site stack.

Main differences

The real difference is where the work happens. With Pagefind, indexing happens during build and search runs from a static bundle. With Winnow, crawling and indexing happen as a hosted service, so the site does not need a search build pipeline at all. That makes Winnow more suitable for WordPress-style publishing, mixed-content sites, and content that changes independently of deployments.

Pagefind is excellent when the site architecture already matches its model. Winnow is better when the site architecture does not. If your content team can publish directly to the website, if PDFs need to appear in search, or if you want search analytics and AI answers without engineering a static workflow around them, Winnow will usually be the easier product.

Pricing and packaging

Pagefind does not come with hosted search pricing because it does not host the search layer for you. Winnow charges for indexed pages, crawling, searches, and optional AI answers, with current unit prices loaded from its pricing configuration.

In practice, Pagefind is better when your team is happy to own the static build path. Winnow is better when you want the search service handled for you.

  • Minimum charge €0.50 minimum per month
  • Indexed pages €5.00 per 1,000 pages per month
  • Indexed PDFs €5.00 per 1,000 PDFs per month
  • Crawling pages €1.00 per 1,000 pages
  • Crawling PDFs €2.00 per 1,000 PDFs
  • Searches €1.00 per 1,000 searches
  • AI answers €30.00 per 1,000 AI answers

Bottom line

Choose Pagefind for static sites with clean deployment pipelines and a desire to avoid hosted search infrastructure. Choose Winnow for content-heavy public sites that need crawling, PDF support, analytics, and no build-step dependency.

Winnow Search is a focused offering done carefully: crawl the site, index the useful content, show what people need, and keep spending understandable.

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