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django-hawkeye: BM25 Full-Text Search for Django on PostgreSQL

A lightweight Elasticsearch alternative for Django. Adds BM25-ranked full-text search using the PostgreSQL pg_textsearch extension, with a one-mixin API and no external services to run. Works as a retrieval layer for RAG.

PythonDjangoPostgreSQLBM25SearchRAGOpen Source
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Most Django projects that need “good enough” search end up running Elasticsearch for it. django-hawkeye gives you BM25 relevance ranking, the same algorithm Elasticsearch uses, directly inside PostgreSQL 17 through the pg_textsearch extension.

class Article(BM25Searchable, models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    content = models.TextField()

    class Meta:
        indexes = [BM25Index(fields=["content"], name="article_bm25_idx")]

Article.search("query")

The extension is enabled through a normal Django migration, so there is nothing extra to deploy. It also makes a solid retrieval layer for Retrieval Augmented Generation without adding a vector database.