Self-Host SearXNG: Privacy-First Search Engine 2026

TL;DR

SearXNG is a self-hosted metasearch engine that aggregates results from 70+ search engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, etc.) while keeping your searches private — no tracking, no profiling, no personalized filter bubbles. AGPL 3.0, ~17K GitHub stars. Deploy in 5 minutes with Docker. Point your browser to your own instance and search the web privately.

Key Takeaways

• SearXNG: AGPL 3.0, ~17K stars, Python, aggregates 70+ search engines
• Privacy: Your queries never reach Google with your IP — SearXNG proxies requests
• No filter bubble: Results aren't personalized to your browsing history
• Setup time: 5 minutes with Docker
• Use case: Personal privacy, family search server, avoiding Google/Bing profiling
• Cost: Server cost only (~$0 on a small VPS alongside other services)

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Why Self-Host a Search Engine?

Google and Bing track everything:

• Every search query is logged with your IP and linked to your Google account
• Search history builds a profile used for ad targeting
• Results are personalized — you see what Google thinks you want to see (filter bubble)
• Data is kept indefinitely and can be used in legal proceedings

DuckDuckGo is better but not ideal:

• Doesn't track you, but results come primarily from Bing
• You still trust a third-party service with your queries
• Bing gets the queries (through DDG's relationship)

SearXNG gets you:

• Your queries stay on your server — never sent to Google with your IP
• SearXNG acts as a proxy: makes anonymous requests to Google/Bing on your behalf
• Aggregated results from 70+ sources — better coverage than any single engine
• Results aren't personalized — you get the "real" search results

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Part 1: Docker Compose Setup

# docker-compose.yml
version: '3.8'

services:
  searxng:
    image: searxng/searxng:latest
    container_name: searxng
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./searxng:/etc/searxng:rw
    environment:
      - SEARXNG_BASE_URL=https://search.yourdomain.com/
      - UWSGI_THREADS=4       # Increase for higher traffic

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    command: redis-server --save "" --appendonly "no"
    cap_drop:
      - ALL
    cap_add:
      - SETGID
      - SETUID
      - DAC_OVERRIDE

# Create config directory and generate initial settings:
mkdir -p searxng

# Start to generate default config:
docker compose up -d

# SearXNG generates a settings.yml in ./searxng/ on first run
# Stop, configure, then restart:
docker compose down

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Part 2: Configuration (settings.yml)

After the first run, ./searxng/settings.yml is created. Key settings to customize:

# searxng/settings.yml

use_default_settings: true

general:
  debug: false
  instance_name: "My Search"
  privacypolicy_url: false
  contact_url: false
  enable_metrics: false      # Don't track usage

server:
  port: 8080
  bind_address: "0.0.0.0"
  secret_key: "your-secret-key-here"    # Change this!
  base_url: "https://search.yourdomain.com/"
  image_proxy: true           # Proxy images (prevents image tracking)
  http_protocol_version: "1.1"

redis:
  url: redis://redis:6379/0

ui:
  static_use_hash: true
  default_locale: ""          # Empty = auto-detect
  query_in_title: false
  infinite_scroll: false
  default_theme: simple
  theme_args:
    simple_style: dark        # Dark mode!

search:
  safe_search: 0              # 0=off, 1=moderate, 2=strict
  autocomplete: ""            # "google", "brave", "duckduckgo", "" (off)
  default_lang: "auto"
  ban_time_on_fail: 5         # Ban engine for 5 min if it fails
  max_ban_time_on_fail: 120

# Configure which search engines to use:
engines:
  - name: google
    engine: google
    shortcut: g
    disabled: false

  - name: bing
    engine: bing
    shortcut: b
    disabled: false

  - name: duckduckgo
    engine: duckduckgo
    shortcut: ddg
    disabled: false

  - name: brave
    engine: brave
    shortcut: brave
    disabled: false

  - name: wikipedia
    engine: wikipedia
    shortcut: wp

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

  - name: stackoverflow
    engine: stackoverflow
    shortcut: so
    disabled: false

  - name: npm
    engine: npm
    shortcut: npm
    disabled: false

  - name: pypi
    engine: pypi
    shortcut: pypi
    disabled: false

  # Disable engines you don't want:
  - name: yahoo
    disabled: true

  - name: yandex
    disabled: true

Generate a Proper Secret Key

openssl rand -hex 32
# Add the output as your secret_key value

# Restart with new config:
docker compose up -d

---

Part 3: HTTPS with Caddy

search.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:8080
}

Or with Nginx:

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name search.yourdomain.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/search.yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/search.yourdomain.com/privkey.pem;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

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Part 4: Set as Default Browser Search Engine

Chrome / Chromium / Brave

1. Go to https://search.yourdomain.com and wait a few seconds
2. Settings → Search engine → Manage search engines
3. Your SearXNG instance should appear as "Other search engines"
4. Click Make default next to it

Or add manually:

• Search engine name: My SearXNG
• Keyword: s
• URL: https://search.yourdomain.com/search?q=%s

Firefox

1. Visit https://search.yourdomain.com
2. Click the search bar → click the SearXNG icon that appears at the bottom
3. "Add SearXNG" → Set as default

Or via add-on: Firefox Multi-Account Containers with SearXNG.

Safari

Add as a custom search engine via Settings → Search → Add Search Engine.

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Part 5: Using Search Bang Shortcuts

SearXNG supports bang shortcuts like DDG for searching specific sites:

!g python async await      → Searches Google directly
!yt funny cats             → Searches YouTube
!gh flask                  → Searches GitHub
!so error message          → Searches Stack Overflow
!npm express               → Searches npm
!wp machine learning       → Searches Wikipedia
!a keyboard                → Searches Amazon
!w google vs bing          → Searches WolframAlpha

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Part 6: Rate Limiting and Access Control

If you're running a private instance, restrict access:

Basic Auth via Nginx

location / {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
    auth_basic "Private Search";
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;
}

# Create user:
echo -n "user:" >> /etc/nginx/.htpasswd
openssl passwd -apr1 'password' >> /etc/nginx/.htpasswd

IP Allowlist (only your home network)

location / {
    allow 1.2.3.4/32;    # Your home IP
    allow 192.168.0.0/24; # Local network
    deny all;
    proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
}

Limit to Intranet (No Public Access)

# docker-compose.yml — only bind to localhost:
ports:
  - "127.0.0.1:8080:8080"   # Not accessible from outside

Then access via VPN or SSH tunnel from outside your network.

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Privacy Features

Image Proxying

Enable in settings.yml (image_proxy: true) — images are fetched by SearXNG's server, not your browser. Prevents Google/other CDNs from knowing you viewed a search result's images.

No Logging

By default, SearXNG logs nothing about searches. Verify in your server logs:

docker compose logs searxng | grep -i "query\|search"
# Should show no query content in logs

Tor Integration (Advanced)

For maximum privacy, route SearXNG's outbound requests through Tor:

# Add to docker-compose.yml:
  tor:
    image: dperson/torproxy
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "9050:9050"

# In searxng/settings.yml:
outgoing:
  proxies:
    all://:
      - socks5h://tor:9050   # Route all engine queries through Tor

Note: Tor makes searches significantly slower and some engines (Google) block Tor exit nodes.

---

Maintenance

# Update SearXNG:
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

# Check if engines are working:
# Visit https://search.yourdomain.com/stats
# Shows which engines are failing or slow

# Clear Redis cache:
docker exec redis redis-cli FLUSHALL

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SearXNG vs Alternatives

Search	Type	Privacy	Index
SearXNG (self-hosted)	Metasearch	✅ Complete	Aggregated
DuckDuckGo	Managed	✅ Good	Bing-based
Brave Search	Managed	✅ Good	Independent
Startpage	Managed	✅ Good	Google proxy
Whoogle	Self-hosted	✅	Google only
Kagi	Managed/paid	✅	Independent

Whoogle (simpler alternative): Only proxies Google results, simpler setup, no multi-engine aggregation.

Why Self-Host SearXNG?

The case for self-hosting SearXNG comes down to three practical factors: data ownership, cost at scale, and operational control.

Data ownership is the fundamental argument. When you use a SaaS version of any tool, your data lives on someone else's infrastructure subject to their terms of service, their security practices, and their business continuity. If the vendor raises prices, gets acquired, changes API limits, or shuts down, you're left scrambling. Self-hosting SearXNG means your data and configuration stay on infrastructure you control — whether that's a VPS, a bare metal server, or a home lab.

Cost at scale matters once you move beyond individual use. Most SaaS equivalents charge per user or per data volume. A self-hosted instance on a $10-20/month VPS typically costs less than per-user SaaS pricing for teams of five or more — and the cost doesn't scale linearly with usage. One well-configured server handles dozens of users for a flat monthly fee.

Operational control is the third factor. The Docker Compose configuration above exposes every setting that commercial equivalents often hide behind enterprise plans: custom networking, environment variables, storage backends, and authentication integrations. You decide when to update, how to configure backups, and what access controls to apply.

The honest tradeoff: you're responsible for updates, backups, and availability. For teams running any production workloads, this is familiar territory. For individuals, the learning curve is real but the tooling (Docker, Caddy, automated backups) is well-documented and widely supported.

Server Requirements and Sizing

Before deploying SearXNG, assess your server capacity against expected workload.

Minimum viable setup: A 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS with 20GB SSD is sufficient for personal use or small teams. Most consumer VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr — offer machines in this range for $5-10/month. Hetzner offers excellent price-to-performance for European and US regions.

Recommended production setup: 2 vCPUs with 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD handles most medium deployments without resource contention. This gives SearXNG headroom for background tasks, caching, and concurrent users while leaving capacity for other services on the same host.

Storage planning: The Docker volumes in this docker-compose.yml store all persistent SearXNG data. Estimate your storage growth rate early — for data-intensive tools, budget for 3-5x your initial estimate. Hetzner Cloud and Vultr both support online volume resizing without stopping your instance.

Operating system: Any modern 64-bit Linux distribution works. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Debian 12 are the most commonly tested configurations. Ensure Docker Engine 24.0+ and Docker Compose v2 are installed — verify with docker --version and docker compose version. Avoid Docker Desktop on production Linux servers; it adds virtualization overhead and behaves differently from Docker Engine in ways that cause subtle networking issues.

Network: Only ports 80 and 443 need to be publicly accessible when running behind a reverse proxy. Internal service ports should be bound to localhost only. A minimal UFW firewall that blocks all inbound traffic except SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS is the single most effective security measure for a self-hosted server.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Running SearXNG without a tested backup strategy is an unacceptable availability risk. Docker volumes are not automatically backed up — if you delete a volume or the host fails, data is gone with no recovery path.

What to back up: The named Docker volumes containing SearXNG's data (database files, user uploads, application state), your docker-compose.yml and any customized configuration files, and .env files containing secrets.

Backup approach: For simple setups, stop the container, archive the volume contents, then restart. For production environments where stopping causes disruption, use filesystem snapshots or database dump commands (PostgreSQL pg_dump, SQLite .backup, MySQL mysqldump) that produce consistent backups without downtime.

For a complete automated backup workflow that ships snapshots to S3-compatible object storage, see the Restic + Rclone backup guide. Restic handles deduplication and encryption; Rclone handles multi-destination uploads. The same setup works for any Docker volume.

Backup cadence: Daily backups to remote storage are a reasonable baseline for actively used tools. Use a 30-day retention window minimum — long enough to recover from mistakes discovered weeks later. For critical data, extend to 90 days and use a secondary destination.

Restore testing: A backup that has never been restored is a backup you cannot trust. Once a month, restore your SearXNG backup to a separate Docker Compose stack on different ports and verify the data is intact. This catches silent backup failures, script errors, and volume permission issues before they matter in a real recovery.

Security Hardening

Self-hosting means you are responsible for SearXNG's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose SearXNG's internal port directly to the internet. The docker-compose.yml binds to localhost; Caddy or Nginx provides HTTPS termination. Direct HTTP access transmits credentials in plaintext. A reverse proxy also centralizes TLS management, rate limiting, and access logging.

Strong credentials: Change default passwords immediately after first login. For secrets in docker-compose environment variables, generate random values with openssl rand -base64 32 rather than reusing existing passwords.

Firewall configuration:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enable

Internal service ports (databases, admin panels, internal APIs) should only be reachable from localhost or the Docker network, never directly from the internet.

Network isolation: Docker Compose named networks keep SearXNG's services isolated from other containers on the same host. Database containers should not share networks with containers that don't need direct database access.

VPN access for sensitive services: For internal-only tools, restricting access to a VPN adds a strong second layer. Headscale is an open source Tailscale control server that puts your self-hosted stack behind a WireGuard mesh, eliminating public internet exposure for internal tools.

Update discipline: Subscribe to SearXNG's GitHub releases page to receive security advisory notifications. Schedule a monthly maintenance window to pull updated images. Running outdated container images is the most common cause of self-hosted service compromises.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Container exits immediately or won't start

Check logs first — they almost always explain the failure:

docker compose logs -f searxng

Common causes: a missing required environment variable, a port already in use, or a volume permission error. Port conflicts appear as bind: address already in use. Find the conflicting process with ss -tlpn | grep PORT and either stop it or change SearXNG's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

1. Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
2. Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
3. If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
4. If using a reverse proxy, verify it's running and the config is valid: caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Permission errors on volume mounts

Some containers run as a non-root user. If the Docker volume is owned by root, the container process cannot write to it. Find the volume's host path with docker volume inspect VOLUME_NAME, check the tool's documentation for its expected UID, and apply correct ownership:

chown -R 1000:1000 /var/lib/docker/volumes/your_volume/_data

High resource usage over time

Memory or CPU growing continuously usually indicates unconfigured log rotation, an unbound cache, or accumulated data needing pruning. Check current usage with docker stats searxng. Add resource limits in docker-compose.yml to prevent one container from starving others. For ongoing visibility into resource trends, deploy Prometheus + Grafana or Netdata.

Data disappears after container restart

Data stored in the container's writable layer — rather than a named volume — is lost when the container is removed or recreated. This happens when the volume mount path in docker-compose.yml doesn't match where the application writes data. Verify mount paths against the tool's documentation and correct the mapping. Named volumes persist across container removal; only docker compose down -v deletes them.

Keeping SearXNG Updated

SearXNG follows a regular release cadence. Staying current matters for security patches and compatibility. The update process with Docker Compose is straightforward:

docker compose pull          # Download updated images
docker compose up -d         # Restart with new images
docker image prune -f        # Remove old image layers (optional)

Read the changelog before major version updates. Some releases include database migrations or breaking configuration changes. For major version bumps, test in a staging environment first — run a copy of the service on different ports with the same volume data to validate the migration before touching production.

Version pinning: For stability, pin to a specific image tag in docker-compose.yml instead of latest. Update deliberately after reviewing the changelog. This trades automatic patch delivery for predictable behavior — the right call for business-critical services.

Post-update verification: After updating, confirm SearXNG is functioning correctly. Most services expose a /health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 — curl it from the server or monitor it with your uptime tool.

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Compare all open source privacy tools at OSSAlt.com/categories/privacy.