explaingit

searxng/searxng

Analysis updated 2026-06-20

★ 29,501PythonAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 4/5LicenseSetup · moderate

TLDR

A self-hosted, privacy-first search engine that queries Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and dozens of other engines at once, combining results without ever tracking you or building a profile.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((SearXNG))
    What it does
      Queries multiple search engines
      Combines results in one page
      No tracking or profiling
    Tech stack
      Python
      Self-hosted server
      YAML config
    Use cases
      Private personal search
      Team or org search instance
      Research without filter bubbles
    Audience
      Privacy-conscious users
      Self-hosters
      Developers
    License
      AGPL-3.0 copyleft
      Source must stay open
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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Run your own private search engine at home or for your team, pulling results from Google and Bing without those services tracking your queries.

USE CASE 2

Replace a company's reliance on commercial search with an internal metasearch instance that keeps employee search habits confidential.

USE CASE 3

Research topics across multiple search engines simultaneously to get broader, less filtered results in one place.

What is it built with?

PythonAGPL-3.0YAML

How does it compare?

searxng/searxngchubin/wttr.inatsushisakai/pythonrobotics
Stars29,50129,53129,418
LanguagePythonPythonPython
Setup difficultymoderateeasyeasy
Complexity4/52/52/5
Audienceops devopsdeveloperresearcher

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 1h+

Requires a server or VPS to run, Docker is the easiest path but still needs a reverse proxy and domain configuration.

Copyleft license: you can use and modify it freely, but if you deploy a modified version as a web service you must release your changes as open source too.

In plain English

SearXNG is a metasearch engine, a search tool that queries multiple other search services at once and combines their results into a single page, without tracking or profiling the people who use it. The core problem it addresses is privacy: when you search on most commercial engines, your queries are logged and used to build a profile about you. SearXNG acts as an intermediary so that neither your identity nor your search habits are exposed to the underlying search providers. It is written in Python and can be self-hosted, meaning anyone can install and run their own private instance. Many public instances are also available for those who don't want to run their own server. You would use SearXNG when you want search results drawn from sources like Google, Bing, Brave, or DuckDuckGo but without letting any of them track you. Because it aggregates from multiple sources, you often get broader coverage than any single engine. The project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL-3.0), which means the source code must remain open even if someone deploys a modified version as a web service.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I want to self-host SearXNG on a Linux VPS. Walk me through installing it with Docker, setting up a reverse proxy with nginx, and configuring it to use Google and Brave as sources.
Prompt 2
Show me how to customize SearXNG's settings.yml to disable tracking engines, set a default language, and enable safe search by default.
Prompt 3
Help me write a Python script that calls my local SearXNG instance's JSON API to search for a query and parse the top 5 results.
Prompt 4
How do I add a custom search engine to SearXNG's engine list and configure its request/response parsing?

Frequently asked questions

What is searxng?

A self-hosted, privacy-first search engine that queries Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and dozens of other engines at once, combining results without ever tracking you or building a profile.

What language is searxng written in?

Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python, AGPL-3.0, YAML.

What license does searxng use?

Copyleft license: you can use and modify it freely, but if you deploy a modified version as a web service you must release your changes as open source too.

How hard is searxng to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 1h+ to a first successful run.

Who is searxng for?

Mainly ops devops.

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