SearXNG: a self-hosted private search engine

SearXNG is a metasearch engine that aggregates the results of other search engines while not storing information about its users. The code is AGPL-3.0 licensed.

The privacy case for Bitcoin owners is concrete. Searches for a hardware wallet model, an exchange withdrawal limit, or how to recover a seed phrase say what you hold and how you store it. My degoogle guide covers swapping Google Search for DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, or Kagi, and my digital privacy checklist covers the rest of the profile around you. SearXNG is a self-hosted alternative to those. Never type seed words into any search box, SearXNG included.

Per SearXNG's docs on private instances, it removes private data from requests to search services: it sends no cookies to external engines, generates a random browser profile for every request, and serves no ads or tracking content. Result pages also do not learn your query or the page you came from.

The limits start on the same page. The IP address the engines see is the IP of the instance. On a home server that is your home IP, so Google and Bing still receive your query from your house, just without your account or cookies attached. SearXNG can be configured to send engine requests through a proxy or Tor, and the docs advise socks5h:// when using Tor so hostnames resolve at the proxy.

The second limit is blocking. Public instances without proper protection are more vulnerable to abuse, which can make the external service show CAPTCHAs or ban the instance's IP address, so searches return fewer results. SearXNG's own defaults suspend an engine for a day after an access-denied error or a CAPTCHA, a week after a Google CAPTCHA, and 15 days after a Cloudflare CAPTCHA, so results can vary from day to day.

The third limit is my own reading, not something the docs measure. A public instance mixes many strangers' queries behind one IP. An instance only you use sends every query from one household, so the engines can see a steady stream from one address even though no cookie ties it to you. If your threat is an engine profiling your IP, a shared public instance hides you in a crowd better than a private one does, at the price of trusting its admin. Pointing the instance at Tor fixes the IP problem and slows searches.

You need a working Docker or Podman install. The official docs call the Compose template the recommended way to deploy in containers, and they include steps to migrate from the older searxng-docker repository. For the current files and commands, follow that guide.

SearXNG supports OpenSearch, so your browser can add the instance as a search engine when you visit it. Then pick it as the default in the browser's settings, following the docs for Firefox or Microsoft Edge.

Two gotchas from SearXNG's about page. Chromium-based browsers only add websites you navigated to without a path, so open the bare address. And a browser will not add a second engine with the same name, so rename the instance or delete the duplicate if the add fails.

One more setting matters for privacy. The default HTTP method is GET, which puts your query in the URL. The docs say POST keeps the search out of history in some browsers, at the cost of a broken back button and drag and drop of search terms.

Use a private network, not an open port. With Tailscale installed on the server, its serve feature shares the local service inside your tailnet over HTTPS. Only devices signed into your tailnet can reach it. Then set the instance's base URL to that address so links and the browser engine entry use it.

HTTPS needs a one-time step: enable HTTPS certificates in the Tailscale admin console. Tailscale warns that machine names get published in a public certificate ledger, so give the server a name that says nothing about you. My self-hosting for beginners guide covers the Tailscale basics.

searx.space tracks public instances and showed 72 online in November 2026, with version, TLS grade, and response times for each, plus a filter to hide networks with privacy issues.

The trust trade-off is the one SearXNG's docs give: with a public instance you have to trust the administrator, because you cannot tell whether requests are logged, aggregated, or sold. The docs also call public instances the best choice for people on the go or trying SearXNG for the first time, and say to use one run by people you trust. A public instance hides your IP from Google and Bing but gives it to the admin instead.

I would run SearXNG if you already have a home server, you search from several devices, and you want no search history sitting on someone else's computer. Put it behind Tailscale, keep it private, and accept that engines will sometimes block it.

I would skip it if you would need to buy hardware just for this. A public instance run by a trusted operator, or the engines listed in my degoogle guide, gives most of the benefit for no upkeep. If your worry is the engines seeing your IP, no home setup fixes that alone; add Tor or use a public instance.