Klevu alternatives – 6 tools to explore

If you’re looking at Klevu alternatives, there’s a good chance something recently changed your mind about staying put.

In January 2025, Klevu merged with Searchspring and Intelligent Reach to form Athos Commerce. Existing customers are supported for at least 2 years, but new features are now being built for the Athos platform instead of Klevu. That’s a real reason to look around.

This guide covers what to look for in an ecommerce search platform, 6 strong alternatives, and how to make the switch without headaches. Let’s get started.

Criteria for evaluating ecommerce search and discovery platforms

Think about what your shoppers actually do on your site. They type things into a search bar, browse category pages, and click on products that catch their eye.

A good ecommerce search platform makes all of that feel fast, relevant, and personal. A bad one serves up empty results, surfaces the wrong products, and sends shoppers straight to a competitor.

The challenge is that most platforms are designed for smaller stores. And you’ll feel that ceiling fast.

If your catalog has 10,000+ products with hundreds of variants, filters, and seasonal changes, you need a platform that was actually built for that scale.

Here’s what you should look for when comparing your options.

The goal is a platform your ecommerce team can actually control day-to-day, without constantly pulling in engineers.

For mid-market brands, especially, that balance matters. You’re managing real catalog complexity without the IT budget of a large enterprise.

The top 6 Klevu alternatives for enterprise brands

These platforms range from developer-first search APIs to fully unified commerce experience platforms. Some are built for engineering teams. Others hand control directly to your ecommerce team.

The right fit depends on how your team operates and what you need search to do across your catalog.

Here’s an honest look at each one:

1. Nosto: Commerce Experience Platform with experience.AI™

Nosto is the agentic Commerce Experience Platform (CXP), which means it goes well beyond search.

It’s the only platform in this list that connects Personalized Search, Category Merchandising, Product Recommendations, and A/B testing in one place, all sharing the same shopper data.

So when someone searches on your site, that behavior feeds into what they see on category pages, in recommendations, and on their next visit too.

The search itself is powered by experience.AI™, Nosto’s intelligence engine. It uses semantic and vector AI, which means it understands what your shoppers mean, even when the words they type don’t match your product titles exactly.

That matters a lot when you’re managing a large catalog with complex attributes and long-tail queries.

A few things that stand out:

• Named Shopify’s preferred personalization provider and the only Shopify Plus Certified App Partner for commerce experience management.
• Native support for Shopify Markets, Hydrogen 2, Flow, and Sections.
• Credo Beauty drove an 8.65% lift in Conversion Rate (CVR) from search; Perry Ellis doubled conversion rates across search pages.
• Most brands go live in weeks rather than months.
• Your team can manage merchandising rules, A/B tests, and boost/bury logic without involving a developer.

Pricing reflects the breadth of the platform, so if you only need standalone search, factor that into your evaluation.

But if you want search, merchandising, and personalization working together in one system, it’s worth booking a demo to see how it fits your catalog.

Best for: Mid-market to enterprise brands on Shopify Plus that want search, merchandising, and personalization in a single connected platform.

2. Algolia: developer-first search with strong relevance controls

Algolia is one of the most widely used search APIs out there. It’s fast (queries return in under 100ms), well-documented, and gives your developers a lot of control over how results are ranked and filtered.

When you’re comparing Klevu vs Algolia, the main difference comes down to who actually runs your search day-to-day. With Algolia, that’s your engineering team.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Changing how results are ranked or adding a merchandising rule typically requires a developer.
• Native personalization and product recommendations require separate integrations.
• NeuralSearch (available on higher tiers) combines keyword and vector retrieval, which helps with intent-based queries.
• Production use at mid-market scale typically starts at $10,000+ per year, with costs climbing as query volume grows.

If your team has strong engineering support and wants granular search control, Algolia is a solid choice. If you want your ecommerce team to manage search independently day-to-day, it’s a harder fit.

Best for: Engineering-led teams that want precise search control and are comfortable building merchandising workflows on top of an API.

3. Bloomreach: enterprise search with content and commerce integration

Bloomreach is built for large enterprises where your content and your products need to work closely together.

Think of brands that publish editorial guides, lookbooks, or blog content right alongside their catalog, and where that content actively helps shoppers decide what to buy.

Its AI layer, Loomi Search+, brings semantic and vector capabilities into the search experience.

When you use the full platform, which includes a customer data platform, email, and Short Message Service (SMS) automation, and a headless Content Management System (CMS), the personalization depth is real.

A few things worth knowing before you evaluate it:

• G2 reviews consistently mention needing a technical consultant or external partner to get it configured (as of May 2026).
• Average annual contracts exceed $100,000.
• Implementation timelines are long, which matters a lot for mid-market teams without large IT support.
• It works best when content and commerce are genuinely integrated throughout the whole operation.

If you’re a mid-market brand without dedicated technical resources, Bloomreach is likely more platform than you need right now.

Best for: Large enterprise brands with editorial and commerce integration needs and a dedicated technical team for setup.

4. Constructor: enterprise-grade product discovery at scale

Constructor is purpose-built for enterprise retailers with large, complex catalogs.

It was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Commerce Search and Product Discovery, Q3 2025, with high scores for personalization, algorithmic merchandising, and agentic discovery.

What sets it apart is how it ranks results. Instead of matching queries to products, it learns from your actual sales data and surfaces the items most likely to convert.

Customers like Sephora, Petco, and Bonobos use it at scale.

A few considerations:

• Built and priced for a large enterprise, so it may be outside the budget range for most mid-market brands.
• Pricing is custom and not published publicly.
• If you’re in the $10M to $50M online revenue range, the full capability set may be more than you need.
• Dedicated product and engineering teams are typically required to get the most out of it.

Best for: Large enterprise brands with 100,000+ Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) and product teams dedicated to search and merchandising optimization.

5. Luigi’s Box: analytics-led search for growing catalogs

Luigi’s Box is a strong option if your team wants solid search performance alongside clear visibility into what’s working and what isn’t.

It handles typos, synonyms, and multilingual queries well. Its analytics dashboard gives you a real view of search behavior, covering zero-results tracking and query-level revenue data.

On G2, it scores 9.6 for Quality of Support and 9.5 for Typo Tolerance.

A few things to weigh:

• Real-time 1:1 personalization is more limited than full CXP platforms.
• If you need search behavior to automatically inform your category pages and recommendations, you’d want a platform with a unified data layer.
• Works best for brands that already have a personalization layer and need a capable standalone search product on top.

If that describes your situation, Luigi’s Box is worth a serious look.

Best for: Mid-market brands that want strong search analytics and a clean integration without the investment of a full CXP.

6. Clerk.io: recommendation-driven discovery

Clerk.io leads with product recommendations. Its recommendation engine is solid, and it does a good job of surfacing related products for upsell and cross-sell across search results, product pages, and email.

Search is part of the product, but it’s not the primary focus. A few things to consider:

• Search accuracy lags behind dedicated search platforms, according to G2 reviewers (as of May 2026).
• The admin interface can be harder for non-technical users to navigate.
• Works best when recommendations are driving more revenue than search for your business.

If your main priority is surfacing the right recommendations at the right moment, Clerk.io is a practical option. If you’re solving a search relevance problem at scale, you’ll likely hit its limits.

Best for: Brands where product recommendations drive more revenue than search, particularly for upsell and cross-sell use cases.

At a glance: platform comparison

Here’s a quick snapshot to help you compare them at a glance.

Key features to prioritize when choosing a Klevu alternative

The criteria section helps you compare platforms on paper. But when you’re getting close to a decision, a few other things tend to separate the right choice from the regrettable one.

When you’re narrowing down your options, these are the areas worth pressing vendors on before you sign anything.

• Support quality after go-live: Most platforms put their best people on the sales process. Ask specifically about post-implementation support. Who is your day-to-day contact once you’re live? What are the response time commitments? G2 reviews are a good reality check here since they reflect what customers actually experience.
• Product roadmap: Check that the platform you’re exploring has a clear roadmap that lines up with where your business is headed. Given what happened with Klevu and the Athos merger, it’s worth asking vendors directly how they communicate product changes and what their development priorities look like over the next 12 to 24 months.
• How the platform handles zero-result queries: This is a practical test you can run during any trial or proof of concept. Search for 10 product types using the kind of language your shoppers actually use. See what comes back. Zero results are lost revenue, and how a platform handles them tells you a lot about the quality of its search intelligence at your catalog size.
• Proof of performance at your scale: A case study from a brand with 500 products tells you very little if you’re running 50,000. Ask vendors for references from brands your size, with a similar catalog and team setup. See some ecommerce search examples to understand what good results actually look like.

Migration considerations while making the switch

Before you migrate, keep in mind that your synonyms, merchandising rules, and search logic in Klevu won’t automatically carry over to the new platform. So getting something wrong can lead to broken search, lost rankings, and weeks of cleanup.

Here’s what to think through before you flip the switch.

• Audit your current setup first: Go through your Klevu configuration before you do anything else. Your synonyms, pinned products, merchandising rules, and redirects won’t carry over automatically. Write it all down so you know exactly what needs to be rebuilt.
• Protect your Search Engine Optimization (SEO): If your URLs or category page structure change during the migration, your organic rankings can take a hit. Set up your redirects, resubmit your sitemap, and double-check your canonical tags before anything goes live.
• Pause A/B tests before cutover: If you’re running tests when you switch, the data becomes unreliable. Stop your active tests, move to the new platform, and then start fresh with clean baselines.
• Don’t migrate during peak periods: A search problem during Black Friday or a big sale is far more costly than pushing your launch back by a few weeks. Pick a quiet period and give yourself room.
• Verify Shopify Plus integration depth: Check that your new platform actually supports Shopify Markets, Hydrogen, and Flow natively before you sign a contract. Don’t assume.

While Klevu is still merging into Athos Commerce, use that time to plan this properly rather than rushing into something.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Here are answers to the questions ecommerce teams most commonly raise when evaluating platforms in the Klevu category.

Is Klevu still available as a standalone platform?

Yes, for now. Klevu merged with Searchspring and Intelligent Reach in January 2025 to form Athos Commerce, and existing customers are supported for at least 2 years.

But new feature development has moved to the Athos platform, so ask your account team what that means for your roadmap.

What does semantic and vector search mean for large ecommerce catalogs?

Semantic search understands what your shoppers mean, even if the words they type don’t match your product titles. Vector search takes it further by finding the closest product matches based on meaning rather than exact keywords.

For large catalogs, this means fewer zero-result pages and more relevant results for the way your customers actually search.

Does Nosto’s personalized search integrate with Shopify Plus?

Yes. Nosto is Shopify’s preferred personalization provider and a Shopify Plus Certified App Partner.

It works natively with Shopify Markets, Hydrogen 2, Flow, and Sections, and you can see how it fits your store through the AI search for Shopify enterprise page.

What should ecommerce teams prioritize when switching search platforms?

Prioritize team readiness over speed. A lot of teams rush the switch and underestimate how long it takes their people to get comfortable with a new platform.

Before go-live, make sure your ecommerce team has actually spent time using the new platform hands-on. The technical migration is the easy part. Adoption is where most switches stall.

How does a unified search and merchandising platform affect shopper discovery?

With separate tools, a shopper’s search behavior stays locked in the search tool and never influences anything else on your site.

A unified platform changes that. Your merchandising, recommendations, and category pages all get smarter from the same data.

The result is a shopping experience that feels like it actually knows what your customers are looking for.

Conclusion

Standalone search platforms solve one problem. But mid-market brands on Shopify Plus increasingly need search, merchandising, and personalization to work from the same data.

Running them as separate systems creates gaps that your shoppers will feel. That’s where a CXP like Nosto makes the most sense.

Nosto is recognized in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Search and Product Discovery. In 2024, search queries on Nosto-powered sites generated 1,024% more revenue year over year.

Huginn, Nosto’s AI commerce agent, works around the clock to surface revenue opportunities your team would otherwise miss. See what Nosto can do for your store.