Documentation > Account Resources

Solr Traffic Bandwidth

Account Resources

Opensolr does not bill by the number of requests. It bills the bytes your index sends back. A tight query and a sloppy one cost the same to make, but not the same to answer.

1,000,000 lean responsesa few bytes each1 GBsame bandwidthsame bill1 heavy responseevery field, every row, no filtersonly the fields you need

One gigabyte of bandwidth is a million lean responses, or one heavy one. What you ask for decides which.

01 · What is counted

On a pre-paid plan you are billed for the outgoing bytes sent from your Opensolr index to your site or app. Nothing else. Not the number of queries, not the size of your index, not the traffic your own site receives.

Every field you return, every row you fetch and every facet you do not need is bandwidth. Return only the fields the page shows, page results instead of pulling thousands of rows, and use filters so the index does the narrowing. The best practices guide covers each of these.
02 · Why is my bandwidth high
Visitorsand botsYour search pageOpensolrindexevery hit becomes a queryoutgoing bytes = billedonly this direction is counted

Whoever reaches your search page, human or bot, triggers a query. The response coming back from the index is the part that counts.

  • Bots and crawlers visit search pages far more than people do, and each visit becomes a query against your index.
  • Heavy responses multiply that. A search page that returns full documents with every field makes every bot visit expensive.
  • A sudden overnight spike is almost always a crawler loop or a scripted attack on the search page, not real visitors.
03 · What to do about it
  • Read the bandwidth saving tips: field lists, paging, filters and caching, in the order they usually pay off.
  • Follow the best practices guide when you build the queries in the first place.
  • Find the source in your logs before you tune anything. Opensolr logs every request to your index, and you can see all of it in three places below.
04 · Where to see who is using it
Logs and analytics API

Query, facet and analyze your request log by any field. Facet by IP and path and you can see exactly who is eating the bandwidth. API documentation

Request log faceted by IP and path through the Opensolr API

The request log faceted by IP address and request path.

Index control panel analytics

Traffic over time, spikes, popular queries and the pages behind them, per index, inside your control panel. Real time monitoring and analytics

Traffic analytics in the Opensolr index control panel

Traffic and query analytics for one index.

Popular queries and traffic sources in the Opensolr index control panel

Popular queries and where the traffic comes from.

Tail the live request log

The last 1,000 lines of the live request log, straight from the control panel. Watch traffic as it happens and spot a loop or an attack the moment it starts.

Live request log tail in the Opensolr index control panel

The live request log, as it comes in.

Live request log tail, filtered, in the Opensolr index control panel

The same log, filtered down to one source.

If the numbers still do not add up, contact us with the index name and we will look at the log with you.