Spring Data Solr Enters the Attic: What Now for Spring Developers?

If you're a Spring developer using Apache Solr, you’ve probably already hit the wall: Spring Data Solr is officially in the Attic. That means it’s done—deprecated, unsupported, and no longer maintained by the Spring team.

No updates. No bug fixes. No support for Spring Boot 3.x or beyond.

This post breaks down what this deprecation means for your apps, how it impacts teams still relying on Solr, and what paths you can take forward—without compromising your backend stability.

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What Happened to Spring Data Solr?

In 2023, the Spring team moved Spring Data Solr to the Spring Attic, a home for projects no longer actively developed. Support had already been winding down since 2020, with the last updates focusing on minor maintenance—not active development.

Now, with Spring Boot 3.x, Spring Data Solr is completely incompatible. If you’re upgrading your app to use the latest Spring stack, you’ll need to refactor any Solr integration.

From the Spring blog:

“Spring Data Solr was deprecated due to low community interest and lack of maintainers. If you're using Spring Boot 3+, Solr is no longer supported.”

The recommendation? Migrate to Spring Data Elasticsearch—or use Solr directly through SolrJ.

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What This Means for Your Application

If you’ve built your application around Spring Boot + Spring Data Solr, here’s what you’re facing:

• Spring Boot 3.x breaks compatibility
• There’s no upgrade path for Spring Data Solr
• You’ll have to rewrite integration logic using SolrJ or switch to another search engine
• No security updates or fixes for Solr-related Spring components

This change is already affecting development teams at scale. Popular articles in the Java ecosystem are now advising:

“If you're still using Solr with Spring Boot 3, consider moving to Elasticsearch.”

But what if you're not ready to switch?

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Option 1: Rewrite with SolrJ (and Own the Plumbing)

One path forward is to use the SolrJ client directly. This avoids Spring Data entirely and gives you full control of Solr’s API.

The downside? You lose the abstraction layer and integration magic that Spring Data offered. You’ll now need to handle queries, configuration, serialization, and connection logic yourself.

For some teams, that’s manageable. For others, it’s a big lift.

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Option 2: Migrate to Elasticsearch or OpenSearch

This is Spring’s official recommendation—and it comes with benefits. Elasticsearch and OpenSearch both have active Spring Data integrations, large communities, and managed service options.

But migrations are expensive. Reindexing, rewriting business logic, testing, and downtime risks all make this a serious investment—especially for large-scale or legacy apps.

Important: If your current Solr implementation involves advanced or customized schema configurations, you should anticipate and plan for potential schema migrations during the upgrade process.

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Option 3: Stay on Solr—Securely

If your Solr deployment is working fine and you're not ready to re-architect your search stack, you don’t have to switch.

HeroDevs offers Never-Ending Support for Spring to keep your backend secure, patched, and supported—even if Spring has moved on.

We provide:

• Security patches and compliance updates for Apache Solr
• Support for Solr 8.11.x, even after community EOL
• Compatibility support for legacy deployments

This lets you safely continue using Solr (via SolrJ or direct integration) without the fear of running insecure, unsupported software.

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The Bottom Line

Spring dropped Solr. That doesn’t mean you have to.

With HeroDevs’ NES for Spring, you can keep your backend stable, secure, and compliant while you decide what’s next. Whether you're delaying a migration or choosing to stick with Solr long-term, we’ve got your stack covered.