serp.fast

Gigablast

Open-source search engine with its own index, built by a single developer – one of the oldest independent web crawlers still operating.

Nathan Kessler
By Nathan KesslerUpdated

Each tool is evaluated against our methodology using public docs, vendor demos, and hands-on testing.

Independent web indexes maintain their own crawl of the web, separate from Google or Bing. This independence is valuable for AI applications that need unbiased search results, want to avoid rate limits on commercial search engines, or need specialized coverage. Several of these indexes are open source, allowing full transparency into how results are ranked.

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Features

–JS Rendering
✓Structured Output
✓Open Source
✓Self-Hosted Option
Pricing:Free

Editorial assessment

A rare survivor – Matt Wells has been running Gigablast independently since 2000, making it one of the longest-lived independent search engines. Open-source and self-hostable. The index is small and aging. The one-person operation means inconsistent uptime and no SLA. More of a historical curiosity and educational resource than production infrastructure.

How Gigablast compares

Mojeek

Mojeek provides a more actively maintained independent index with API access.

Stract

Stract is the modern open-source search engine project building a fresh independent index.

Common Crawl

Common Crawl offers far larger open data if you want to build your own search.

See full Gigablast alternatives comparison →

Frequently asked questions

Is Gigablast open source?

Yes. Matt Wells released the Gigablast source code under the Apache License 2.0 in 2013, and it remains on GitHub as gigablast/open-source-search-engine. It is a distributed crawler and search engine written in C and C++ for Linux. The repository has not seen meaningful updates in years, so treat it as a frozen reference rather than maintained software.

How much does Gigablast cost?

Gigablast was free. The code is available under Apache 2.0, and the hosted search service carried no published pricing. There is little to buy today because the hosted index at gigablast.com went offline around 2023 with no official statement. To use Gigablast now, you self-host the open-source code rather than pay for a hosted product or API.

Can you self-host Gigablast?

Yes. Self-hosting is the only realistic way to run Gigablast since the public service is down. The C/C++ codebase runs as a distributed crawler and search engine across Linux servers. Expect real operational work: compiling aging code, running your own crawl, and maintaining the index yourself. There is no managed option and no support behind it.

Does Gigablast render JavaScript when it crawls?

No. Gigablast is a text-and-HTML crawler with no JavaScript rendering, so client-side single-page apps and content injected after page load will not be captured. Its strength was full-text indexing and search over raw HTML at scale, not browser-based scraping. If you need rendered pages, a headless-browser scraper or a rendering API is a better fit.

What are the best alternatives to Gigablast?

For an independent web index you control, the closest options are Mojeek, which runs its own crawler and search index, and Stract, an open-source search engine with its own index. For raw crawl data at scale, Common Crawl publishes large public web archives you can query without running a crawler yourself. Pick Common Crawl for datasets, Mojeek or Stract for a working search index.

How does Gigablast compare to Common Crawl?

They solve different problems. Gigablast is a self-hostable search engine you compile and run to crawl and query the web yourself, but its hosted index is defunct and the code is unmaintained. Common Crawl is a regularly updated public dataset of crawled pages you download or query, with no engine to operate. For current web data, Common Crawl is the practical choice. Gigablast is mainly an educational reference.

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