Is Stract still available?
No. The hosted version at stract.com is gone, and the StractOrg/stract repository was archived read-only in April 2026 with no development since March 2025. When it ran, the hosted search was free with no paid tier, because it was a non-profit, open-source project rather than a commercial product. The code is still public, so you can read or fork it, but there is no longer a service to query.
Is Stract open source?
Yes. Stract is fully open source under the AGPL-3.0 license. Its crawler, index, and ranking code are public on GitHub under the StractOrg organization, and the codebase is mostly Rust. Transparency was the point. You can read exactly how results were ranked. The repository is archived read-only as of April 2026, so treat it as a source you can read and fork rather than an actively shipping project.
Can you self-host Stract?
In principle, yes. Since the full stack is open source, you can build and run Stract locally from source by following the steps in its CONTRIBUTING file. Self-hosting means operating your own crawler and index, which is a heavy lift. With the repository now archived and no upstream activity, you would be maintaining a codebase that no one is updating for you.
Does Stract render JavaScript?
No. Stract is a search engine that crawls and indexes pages and returns results. It is not a scraping tool that loads and executes JavaScript on target pages for you. If you need to render client-side content from specific sites, this is the wrong category of tool. Its distinguishing feature is user-configurable ranking through "optics" files, which let you reweight or filter results by source type.
What is the best Stract alternative?
Mojeek is the closest alternative and the practical pick for production. Like Stract, it runs its own independent crawler and index, but that index is far larger and it offers a documented search API, which Stract never did. Mojeek is the one to use when you need an independent index you can query programmatically today. Stract is now archived, so treat it as a reference implementation for transparent, user-customizable ranking rather than a live option.
How does Stract compare to Mojeek?
Both built their own index, independent of Google and Microsoft. Mojeek has crawled the web since 2006, has a much larger index, and exposes a public API for developers. Stract's index stayed small and early-stage, and it had no commercial API. Its draw was open-source transparency and the "optics" customization system. Mojeek is the one still running; Stract is archived, so it is now interesting to read rather than to query.
