Im following the install instructions as per the haystack documentation http://docs.haystacksearch.org/en/master/tutorial.html#installation and the search engine installation https://django-haystack.readthedocs.io/en/master/installing_search_engines.html#elasticsearch I have installed Elasticsearch 5.1.16 which is listed as compatible and have put the settings in, the installation guide only has examples for Elasticsearch versions 1 and 2 but states that 5 is supported. so I changed to version 5 in the settings