SearXNG – Freedom of Internet Searching

Internet Software
July 17, 2025
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5 minutes read

SearXNG is a free, open-source meta-search engine designed for users who want neutral, unfiltered search results without tracking or ads. It is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Key Features of the SearXNG Meta-Search Engine

SearXNG is a fork and successor of the SearX project. The goals of this meta-search engine are to protect users from having their data collected while providing relevant results without advertisements.

This meta-search engine integrates dozens of different search providers—among them Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and Wikipedia, and merges their results in one place, without revealing your identity to those services.

SearXNG forwards the user’s query to the selected search engines but without cookies, JavaScript telemetry, your IP address, or other identifiers. The responses are collected and displayed in a simple local user interface. Searches can be further refined by category (e.g., news, images, video, academic papers).

SearXNG can be used in two ways:

Via public instances: There are currently over 70 publicly available instances that you can access at https://searx.space. This is the easier option but comes with certain limitations and security concerns.
Self-hosted: Install on your own server (VPS, NAS, home server) using Docker or manual installation. Detailed installation instructions are available on the “Installation” page of the project’s documentation. This option offers greater control over your data and privacy.

In addition to classic web search, SearXNG supports more than 200 search sources, which users can customize. These include:

Images (Flickr, Pixabay, Bing Images…)
Video (YouTube, Dailymotion…)
Torrent searches (e.g., The Pirate Bay, zTorrent)
IT & development resources (GitHub, Stack Overflow, Arch Wiki…)
News, maps, translations, weather forecasts, etc.

SearXNG is compatible with VPNs and HTTPS. For enhanced security, it can also be accessed over the Tor network. Queries are automatically deleted after search.

Its architecture is modular, and access via an API is supported. The user interface can be customized with themes. All settings are stored locally in the browser. A wide range of languages is supported.

Use Cases for SearXNG

In an era of pervasive surveillance, user profiling, and centralization of internet services, the need for privacy-protecting tools has never been greater. SearXNG is a powerful, transparent tool for anyone who wants to search the web without monitoring or ads.

This search engine approaches the ideal of complete user anonymity online. It has very low hardware requirements and can run on older machines. The interface is simple and resembles other web browsers; the difference is that SearXNG is an open-source project with flexible search settings and sources.

By searching the web with SearXNG, you get more comprehensive, objective, and diverse results. It is under active development, with each new version delivering faster load times, better modularity, a cleaner interface, API support, and more stable performance.

It is popular among self-hosting organizations and communities that want their own search instance. SearXNG is most often used by researchers, journalists, IT professionals, and those who value digital privacy. SearXNG puts control back into the hands of the user.

Platform:
Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS