An efficient algorithm named Pattern search (PS) has been used widely in various scientific and engineering fields. However, even though the global convergence of PS has been proved, it does not perform well on more complex and higher dimension problems nowadays. In order to improve the efficiency of PS and obtain a more powerful algorithm for global optimization, a new algorithm named Free Pattern Search (FPS) based on PS and Free Search (FS) is proposed in this paper. FPS inherits the global search from FS and the local search from PS. Two operators have been designed for accelerating the convergence speed and keeping the diversity of population. The acceleration operator inspired by FS uses a self-regular management to classify the population into two groups and accelerates all individuals in the first group, while the throw operator is designed to avoid the reduplicative search of population and keep the diversity. In order to verify the performance of FPS, two famous benchmark instances are conducted for the comparisons between FPS with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) variants and Differential Evolution (DE) variants. The results show that FPS obtains better solutions and achieves the higher convergence speed than other algorithms. Pattern Search Free Search particle swarm optimization Free Pattern Search Hooke and Jeeves Pattern Search differential evolution direct search simulated annealing differential evolution with biogeography-based optimization directed tabu search cellular particle swarm optimization integrated learning particle swarm optimizer learning-enhanced differential evolution clustering-based differential evolution the pattern matrix the current point in Pattern Search the previous point in Pattern Search the base point in Pattern Search the search step size of pattern the search step sizes factor of the pattern the reduce factor of pattern the population size of Free Pattern Search the number of the dimension the numbers of steps for local Pattern Search the rate of the detection range the jth individual in the population the ith element of an individual 
Free Pattern Search for global optimization