Extend Capabilities of Vespa.ai

Adapt Vespa.ai to your exact search, indexing, and integration needs

Using custom components, engineering teams can shape query logic, document pipelines, and APIs—all within Vespa's scalable architecture.

Custom Components

Official Vespa.ai Partner

Expert Implementation

Contact Us

Key Extension Capabilities

Expand Vespa's functionality with custom components that integrate seamlessly into its architecture

Custom Searchers

Take control of how Vespa handles queries and search results.

Inject business logic into ranking and filtering
Rewrite or enrich queries with user/session context
Support advanced retrieval strategies like multi-phase search

Why it matters:

Build smarter, more personalized search experiences that align with your product and users.

Document Processing Extensions

Preprocess, enrich, and validate content before indexing.

Standardize and enrich incoming documents
Derive metadata or vector fields on the fly
Route and transform content types based on structure

Why it matters:

Ensure your index is clean, enriched, and optimized for performance.

Custom HTTP Endpoints

Deploy APIs and tools directly inside your Vespa container.

Build admin tools, health endpoints, or microservice APIs
Serve business metrics or debugging interfaces
Connect Vespa to other services through secure, custom routes

Why it matters:

Extend your system without adding operational complexity.

Other Supported Extensions

Vespa also supports:

Language Processing Plugins — tokenizers, stemmers, embedders
Feed Pipelines — customized content ingestion logic
Monitoring & Metrics — custom metric producers

Why Technical Leaders Choose to Extend Vespa

Architectural Flexibility

Extend without rewriting your app stack

Production-Ready

All components run natively in Vespa's distributed system

Strategic Control

Own ranking logic, content pipelines, and operational flows

Why choose Searchplex for Vespa Custom Components development?

  • Our team brings over a decade of experience designing, building, and scaling AI/ML-powered search and discovery systems across diverse industries and use cases.
  • Understanding of Vespa internals with hands-on experience building custom Java components that plug into Vespa platform.
  • Actively delivering Vespa based search solutions in production since 2023.

Custom Component FAQs

How do custom Vespa components impact performance?

Custom components are compiled and run natively within Vespa's JVM, so they typically have minimal performance overhead compared to Vespa's built-in components.

What languages can I use to extend Vespa?

Vespa components are typically written in Java, but you can also use other JVM languages like Kotlin or Scala.

Can custom components be updated without downtime?

Yes. Vespa supports hot reloading of components. With proper versioning and deployment practices, updates can be rolled out with zero downtime and no query interruption.

Do custom components work in both self-hosted Vespa and Vespa Cloud?

Yes, custom components work in both environments, though Vespa Cloud has additional security and testing requirements.

How complex is it to maintain custom components?

Maintenance complexity depends on the component, but Vespa's stable APIs minimize breaking changes. Our expertise helps ensure sustainable, future-proof implementations.

Need Help Extending Vespa.ai?

From custom searchers to full indexing pipelines, Searchplex helps you build the Vespa components your use case demands—fast, flexible, production-ready.