SearXNG — Privacy-First Metasearch Engine

SearXNG Configuration & Features

Search Engine Categories

SearXNG aggregates results from 70+ engines across categories:

JSON API for AI Applications

SearXNG provides a clean JSON API — perfect for AI pipelines:

# Search and get JSON results
curl "http://localhost:8080/search?q=AI+agents+2026&format=json"

import requests

def search(query, categories="general", num_results=10):
    resp = requests.get("http://localhost:8080/search", params={
        "q": query,
        "format": "json",
        "categories": categories,
        "pageno": 1,
    })
    results = resp.json()["results"][:num_results]
    return [{"title": r["title"], "url": r["url"], "content": r["content"]}
            for r in results]

# Use in your AI pipeline
results = search("best practices for RAG pipelines")
context = "\
".join(f"- {r['title']}: {r['content']}" for r in results)
# Feed context to your LLM

Integration with AI Search Apps

SearXNG is the default search backend for major AI search tools:

# Morphic .env
SEARXNG_API_URL=http://localhost:8080

# Perplexica .env
SEARXNG_URL=http://localhost:8080

# Open WebUI — enable in admin settings
# Settings > Web Search > SearXNG URL: http://localhost:8080

Settings Configuration

# searxng/settings.yml
use_default_settings: true

general:
  instance_name: "My Search"

search:
  safe_search: 0
  default_lang: "en"
  autocomplete: "google"

server:
  secret_key: "your-secret-key-here"
  bind_address: "0.0.0.0"
  port: 8080

engines:
  - name: google
    engine: google
    shortcut: g
    disabled: false

  - name: github
    engine: github
    shortcut: gh
    disabled: false

  - name: arxiv
    engine: arxiv
    shortcut: ax
    disabled: false

Privacy Features

• No tracking — Zero cookies, no user profiles, no search history on server
• No ads — Clean results without sponsored content
• Proxy support — Route image and result links through SearXNG
• Tor-friendly — Works as a Tor hidden service
• Self-hosted — Your data never leaves your infrastructure

FAQ

Q: What is SearXNG? A: SearXNG is a free, self-hosted metasearch engine with 27,500+ GitHub stars that aggregates results from 70+ search providers without tracking. It's the most popular search backend for AI applications like Morphic and Perplexica.

Q: How is SearXNG different from Google or DuckDuckGo? A: SearXNG aggregates results from multiple engines (including Google and DDG) but strips all tracking. Being self-hosted, there are no rate limits, no API keys needed, and no costs — you control the entire search infrastructure.

Q: Is SearXNG free? A: Yes, fully open-source under AGPL-3.0. Self-host on your own infrastructure at zero cost.