serp.fast

SearXNG

Open-source metasearch engine that aggregates results from 70+ search engines – self-hostable with API access.

Nathan Kessler
By Nathan KesslerUpdated

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

AI search APIs are the infrastructure layer that gives large language models access to current web information. Unlike traditional search engines, these APIs return semantically relevant, structured results optimized for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and AI agent workflows. They are used by AI products that need to answer questions about the real world beyond their training data.

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Features

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

Editorial assessment

The only fully self-hosted option in this category. Aggregates results from 70+ engines including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and niche sources. Popular with privacy advocates. Quality depends entirely on upstream sources and your instance configuration. Rate limiting from aggregated engines is a constant headache at scale. Best for privacy-first teams comfortable with ops overhead.

How SearXNG compares

Tavily

Tavily is the managed alternative – zero ops burden, but you're trusting a third party with your queries.

LLMLayer

LLMLayer adds AI synthesis on top of search results at low cost, without requiring self-hosting.

See full SearXNG alternatives comparison →

Frequently asked questions

Is SearXNG free to use?

Yes. SearXNG is free and open source. There is no license fee, paid tier, or per-request charge. Because you host it yourself, your only costs are the server and the time to operate an instance. The project ships no hosted commercial plan, but you can use one of the public community instances listed at searx.space at no cost if you would rather not self-host.

Is SearXNG open source and self-hostable?

Yes to both. SearXNG is an open-source metasearch engine, forked from Searx and developed publicly on GitHub under a copyleft license. It is built to be self-hosted. You deploy your own instance, usually through Docker, and keep control over the configuration and data. There is no vendor SaaS to depend on, which is part of why it fits privacy-first teams that are willing to run their own infrastructure.

Does SearXNG render JavaScript or scrape full pages?

No. SearXNG is a metasearch aggregator, not a browser-based scraper. It queries more than 70 upstream engines such as Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, then merges their results. So it returns search listings rather than fully rendered page content. It does not execute JavaScript or load dynamic pages. If you need rendered HTML or content extraction, pair it with a separate fetching or rendering tool.

Does SearXNG provide an API for developers?

Yes, once you enable it. A fresh instance serves only HTML by default. You turn on the JSON output format in the configuration to get structured results that code and AI agents can consume. After that, you query your own endpoint and receive aggregated results as JSON. Several AI frameworks support SearXNG as a search backend, so it fits into agent and retrieval pipelines.

How does SearXNG compare to Tavily?

Tavily is a hosted search API built for AI agents, with managed infrastructure and usage-based pricing, so you call an endpoint and pay per use. SearXNG is free and self-hosted, which gives you control over your data but requires you to run and maintain the instance. Pick Tavily to skip the ops work and get a ready answer-oriented API. Pick SearXNG when privacy, cost, or self-hosting matters more than convenience.

When should I choose SearXNG over the Brave Search API?

Choose SearXNG when you want a privacy-first, self-hosted setup with no per-request cost and you are comfortable with the operations overhead, including rate limits from the engines it aggregates. Result quality depends on your upstream sources and configuration. If you prefer a managed, single-source API with predictable support and no servers to run, the Brave Search API is the better fit.

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