# Case insensitive term query (case\_insensitive) performance penalty?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/case-insensitive-term-query-case-insensitive-performance-penalty/291371>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [December 9, 2021, 11:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/case-insensitive-term-query-case-insensitive-performance-penalty/291371 "2021-12-09T23:20:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![roytmana](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/roytmana/32/44855_2.png) [@roytmana](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/roytmana)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 11:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/case-insensitive-term-query-case-insensitive-performance-penalty/291371/1 "2021-12-09T23:20:28Z")

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Hello,

Is there any significant performance penalty for using `case_insensitive: true` in term queries?

If I use keyword mapping with lowercase normalizer, highlighter would emit lowercased results which I would like to avoid. I can index it as `text` with `keyword` tokenizer and `lowercase` filter but the nature of the field is keyword and I would like to keep it as such while being able to match case insensitive preserve case in highlighter.  
`case_insensitive: true` would take care of all this but I could not find any info on how it is implemented and if it has any considerable performance penalty

Thank you,  
Alex

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2022, 11:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/case-insensitive-term-query-case-insensitive-performance-penalty/291371/2 "2022-01-06T23:20:31Z")

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