Complete Guide to Elasticsearch (Udemy.com)
Learn Elasticsearch from scratch and begin learning the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash & Kibana) and Elastic Stack.
Created by: Bo Andersen
Last updated January 2026
Our take
Based on the ratings of 25,523 students and a sample of their written reviews, the syllabus, the course as of January 2026. No course pays to be reviewed.
Bo Andersen's course is a 13 hour, 132 lecture walk through Elasticsearch on its own, with Logstash and Kibana deliberately left out. The syllabus spends most of its time on mapping and analysis, searching, and aggregations, so the emphasis is on understanding how the engine works rather than wiring up a dashboard. It is aimed at developers who will query a cluster from an application, not admins who run one in production. With about 157,000 students and over 25,000 reviews, it carries Udemy's Bestseller badge, and a 4.6 rating from that many people is hard to argue with.
Reviewers praise the clarity and structure. One says the course taught him the logic behind Elasticsearch, not just how to run it, and another notes that the GitHub repo with every lecture query saves time. Several people say it goes deeper than they needed. The lower ratings point at sections, joining queries in particular, where the video shows older syntax that no longer matches the resources, even though the course was refreshed in January 2026. One reviewer found the delivery too much like a textbook being read aloud, and another wanted exercises that make students write queries from a prompt instead of copying them.
Against the courses beside it, this is the pure Elasticsearch option. The Elastic Stack course and the Masterclass both bolt on Logstash and Kibana, so pick those if the goal is the whole pipeline in one purchase. Pick this one to actually understand analyzers, mappings and how to improve search results, and learn Kibana separately. There are six quizzes but no coding exercises, so plan on typing the queries out rather than just watching. Recommended for developers, with a warning that it rewards patience.
Pros
- Theory comes before each query, and one student says it taught the logic behind Elasticsearch, not just how to run it
- Every query from the lectures is in a GitHub repo, which saves time while following along
- Refreshed in January 2026 and still being updated after a decade on Udemy
- Nearly 90 percent of 25,500 ratings are four or five stars
Cons
- Some sections, joining queries especially, show older syntax that no longer matches the resources
- No coding exercises, only six quizzes, so nothing forces you to write queries unaided
- Several reviewers found it deeper than they needed for basic search
Explanations were very clear, most important concepts were covered, very well structured course.
Listed as all levels, and a reviewer says it works with or without prior knowledge, but expect to read JSON comfortably and not fear a terminal.
What you will learn
- How to build a powerful search engine with Elasticsearch
- The theory of Elasticsearch and how it works under-the-hood
- Write complex search queries
- Be proficient with the concepts and terminology of Elasticsearch
Course content
10 sections · 132 lectures · 13 hours of video 6 quizzes, 4 articles
- 1Introduction 4 free previews5 lectures · 1 quiz · 44 min
- 2Getting Started 5 free previews14 lectures · 2 quizzes · 2.1 hours
- 3Managing Documents18 lectures · 1.4 hours
- 4Mapping & Analysis33 lectures · 3.2 hours
- 5Searching for Data20 lectures · 3 quizzes · 2.3 hours
- 6Joining Queries12 lectures · 50 min
- 7Controlling Query Results8 lectures · 25 min
- 8Aggregations12 lectures · 1 hour
- 9Improving Search Results9 lectures · 54 min
- 10Conclusion1 lecture
Who it is for
The instructor says it suits
- Developers who want to learn Elasticsearch. The course is intended for developers and not system administrators.
What you need before you start
- Knowledge of JSON
- Basic terminal skills is a plus
Quality Score
No CourseDuck member has rated this course yet. Taken it? Give each part a thumbs up or down.
Overall Score : 92 / 100
Course Description
Do you want to learn Elasticsearch from the beginning and become a professional in no time? This course is an excellent way for you to quickly learn Elasticsearch and to put your knowledge to work in just a few hours! This online course is the most comprehensive Elasticsearch tutorial that you will find anywhere! It is a great starting point for anyone who wants to learn the Elastic Stack and ELK stack, as Elasticsearch is at the center of both stacks.
Elasticsearch is an extremely popular search engine and will be an excellent addition to your CV - even if you are already familiar with other search engines or frameworks such as Apache Lucene, Apache Solr, Algolia, etc.
This Elasticsearch course is a combination of theory and learning by doing. Before giving examples of how to perform certain queries, you will have been equipped with the necessary theory in advance. This ensures that you not only know how to write powerful Elasticsearch queries, but that you also understand the relevant theory. Throughout this tutorial, you will get a deep understanding of how Elasticsearch works under the hood.
The course starts from the absolute beginning, and no knowledge or prior experience with Elasticsearch is required. We will walk through all of the most important aspects of Elasticsearch. After completing this course, you will be able to utilize Elasticsearch for a number of use cases and purposes, such as:
Building a full text search engine (e.g. similar to Google Search)
Data analytics for large amounts of data with aggregations
Using Elasticsearch as a time series database (TSDB)
... and much more!
Combined with other products in the Elastic Stack, such as Logstash or Kibana, you will unlock several other features, such as:
Log management and log analysis
Observability (including server/service monitoring and APM (Application Performance Monitoring))
Data visualization and reporting
Security analysis (SIEM)
... and much more!
* These features are not specifically covered in this course. Some of them are covered in my Logstash and Kibana courses.
So, join me in this online course and learn how to build amazing things with Elasticsearch!
Please note that this course is intended for developers who want to interact with an Elasticsearch cluster in one way or another and not system administrators looking to maintain an Elasticsearch cluster in production. The course focuses on functionality relevant to utilize the capabilities of Elasticsearch as a developer. It also covers Elasticsearch in favor of OpenSearch, but most of the core features are identical or similar. So even if you wish to learn OpenSearch, this course should still be a good starting point.
Note that this course does not cover Logstash and Kibana. This is so that I can go into much greater detail with Elasticsearch and focus on that exclusively. This course is therefore dedicated to Elasticsearch. For courses on Logstash and Kibana, please see my other courses.
Instructor Details
- 4.6 Rating
25,523 Reviews
Bo Andersen
My name is Bo Andersen and I am a software engineer from Denmark.
I currently work as the lead developer and partner at a startup company, apart from teaching here at Udemy. I have previously worked at a very successful company, operating one of the largest websites in Denmark, before deciding to teach software engineering.
I have worked with programming for a decade and have a bachelor's degree in computer science. I started out learning to code by building websites in my spare time, and have since worked with many technologies such as Python, PHP, Postgres, MySQL, Docker, AWS, etc. Apart from the ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) and Elastic Stack, of course.
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Reviews
By Anonymized User on 7/20/2026
some bits are outdated and cause confusion over some topics that already pretty dense, but then corrected while watching the videos and with the repo that is provided. I felt that course was way too deep, but thats elasticsearch for you, a platform with which you can do so many things.
By Harsh Saini on 7/2/2026
The course is extremely informative and helpful for anyone with or without any advance basic understanding of Elastic Search. I liked the teaching style of Bo and would love to revisit the course to consolidate my understanding more.
By Zac Israel on 2/17/2026
This was an excellent course. My only critique is that there should have been more opportunities for students to demonstrate what they learned—for example, quizzes within Udemy that require students to write Elasticsearch queries based on prompts. All of the queries used in the lectures are available in the GitHub repository, which is helpful for following along and saves time. However, relying on pre-written queries doesn’t fully allow students to test their understanding independently. I also would have liked to see a practical example of how Elasticsearch could be integrated into an application, perhaps through a small React/Node project that students could connect to Elasticsearch themselves. Aside from these two suggestions, this was a great course and I learned a lot. Professor Bo Anderson is an excellent instructor, and I would gladly take more courses from him.
By Samuel Vidal on 1/15/2026
A really amazing course. Complete, concise, rigorous, exact and deep. It covers everything you need to use and, most importantly, understand Elastic, covering any theoretical aspect you need for practical use. Perfect balance between theory and practice. I learned a lot, so I'm looking forward to start Logstash and Kibana curses, expectations are now higher. Thanks Bo!
By Brian H on 11/2/2025
Great job with the intro. Talking about not knowing where to start is what hooked me. I have worked with splunk for a decade and I was hitting a wall on where to start so thank you for the approach.
By Abhishek Verma on 1/22/2024
The content is quite comprehensive. However it appears you've switched between the latest and older versions of ES hence the UI, semantics are not entirely consistent. But overall a comprehensive primer to ES, esp for somebody who is starting out.
By Chris Yang on 3/17/2023
after dropping twice of this courses.... I stick to the end eventually, and update the reviews-> this is a great course! BUT, don't work through as the course structure in order. Instead, do "search, control result, aggregation before mapping.." u will find it very easy to follow if u're an absolutely beginner. Hope the lecture could read this comment and update a road-map for new beginners!
By Jiří Chmiel on 11/3/2020
I successfully completed this course today. I'm very satisfied to it. This year we started work with ElasticSearch in our company and I very necessarily needed to get broadly knowledge about main concepts at least. And I wouldn't get it by reading the documentation. Only way is well-structured course lead by a lector with practical experiences. And this course fulfills both conditions for me. The parts where lector explains the principles by illustrative schemes or talk about personal experience with working with ES are very valuable. Thank you. P.S. a little reproach to transcript in the later lectures, there are a lot of typos. Instead of watching video real-time I rather read and scroll pictures because that's things are getting easy into my head and those typos make reading hard. P.P.S. sorry for my english :) Enjoy searching! P.P.S. sorry for my english :) Enjoy searching!
By DAVID PINHASIK on 7/7/2020
Here are some comments about this course and about Bo: 1. The course was thought out and planned meticulously. 2. All of the essential topics were covered thoroughly, with a strong emphasis on practical applications and best practices. 3. The material was interesting and easy to follow and was presented in an orderly and cumulative fashion. 4. There is an abundance of examples and all of the queries are available in the GitHub repository. 5. Bo is highly available. He always responded to my questions in the course Q&A very quickly, and in a very professional and friendly manner. 6. I have taken many courses on Udemy and I think this is one of the best courses that I have taken, if not the best. I recommend taking notes while learning this course, because there is a lot to remember.
By Vipin Suthar on 3/31/2020
Author has been progressing with the course in such a manner that my curiosity is increasing to know the depths of this product, Also until now i haven't bored yet excluding installation part, which i have skipped as i've been working on this product from last 4 months. Since there is a vast documentation there on the official website, reading which always get me a good nap! Simply, A great guide to jump start! But you still needs to went through with official documentations if you wants to cover all features. Since this course will give you a fine idea of what Elasticsearch is, how it works under the hood and what are the features and functionality is...!! Thanks Bo, for enough elaboration provided by you on the topics covered yet!




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