# Autocomplete Strategy

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/autocomplete-strategy/375869>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [March 13, 2025, 10:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/autocomplete-strategy/375869 "2025-03-13T22:49:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![xef](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/898d66/32.png) [@xef](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/xef)\
**Post date:** [March 13, 2025, 10:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/autocomplete-strategy/375869/1 "2025-03-13T22:49:26Z")

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We are new to Elasticsearch's options for autocomplete functionalities.  
Would apprciate if someone could advise us as to what is the best option for autocomplete such as Completion Suggesters, Search As You Type etc.  
Thanks

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**Author:** ![elasticfan1](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/elasticfan1/32/122903_2.png) [@elasticfan1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/elasticfan1)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 4:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/autocomplete-strategy/375869/2 "2025-03-14T16:25:02Z")

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I've been investigating this as well and these are things I noticed:

-Completion suggester searches and returns the actual field values that match. The only issue is that it only searches prefixes. So if you have multiple words like "yellow boat", it won't match if you type "boa".

-Search as you type searches and returns the entire record it matched on. This has several issues if you want just the values it matched on. If you have several records with the same title, then it will return all the records with the same titles. And you have to collapse them to skip duplicates.

Also, it has trouble with fields with multiple values. If it matches on that record, you don't know who value it matched on. You would have to iterate through highlighted matches to figure out the which value it matched on.

I would love a better solution if you are able to find one 🙂

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**Author:** ![xef](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/898d66/32.png) [@xef](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/xef)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 8:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/autocomplete-strategy/375869/3 "2025-03-14T20:59:24Z")

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Hi  
Not getting much response here so I am trying to find a consultant who can advise us.  
Will let you know when I find something.