For searches in the “do a search for” box, Bubble finds the results very fast. If the search is slow, it’s usually due to download times – like if you are returning a large number of records, and/or the records are very data heavy.
Advanced filters (required for many-to-many searches) can be slow because those are done client side. But one-to-many searches can be handled by Bubble server side via the regular do a search for box.
Re: whether it make sense to use a list field to replace a search, you generally want to avoid long lists in the list field.
Nice discussion on this topic in this mega thread:
The best approaches and some good insights into the inner workings of Bubble are also well outlined in this ebook:
