this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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… by running your own instance of the free and open-source federated metasearch engine SearXNG on OpenBSD!

all 35 comments
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[–] yodeljunkmanenvy@piefed.social 27 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

There is also a list of publicly operated SearXNG instances at https://searx.space/. We host the one at https://search.freestater.org/, and there are plenty of other good ones.
bVuZT3n0X1rOSXk.jpg

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Who says they are securely operated and don't store any data??

[–] jackr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

who says that about any search engine? can you trust them? searXNG is usually run by random people who are less likely to use your data than a larger search company

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 2 weeks ago

At least with Google it wont be an individual that can open my data (most likely).
Probably only the AI or whatever can actually read any of it directly.

[–] yodeljunkmanenvy@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The devs at SearXNG have a bot that regularly scans the public instances for changes to the source code and delists them as a public instance if it's altered.

If you go to https://searx.space/, they show the results of the scans for each instance.

The software is free and open source. You are encouraged to inspect the code yourself to make sure no data is collected!

Here is the source code: 

https://github.com/searxng/searxng

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Thank you very much for proving what's correct :)

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl -4 points 2 weeks ago

If you're using a shared IP, it doesn't matter.

You are using a VPN or Tor, right?!?

[–] thejml@sh.itjust.works 24 points 2 weeks ago

I run it in a container on Kubernetes. Definitely recommend.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I still don't understand how Searx is able to operate for free. Don't the API calls cost money?

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago

From what I've read, I believe it's a combination of donations. sponsors, volunteer hosting from like minded organizations.

[–] Neptr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If I had to guess, they probably don't use the APIs, inside using scrapping of some sort.

[–] sunstoned@lemmus.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

My understanding is it scrapes what it can't meaningfully get out of an API. Public instances run into rate limiting, but private instances don't really have that problem.

[–] ap1werks@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

look at that domain name! respect

[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

If you're interested in this, the term you're looking for is punycode

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Usually its a sign of a scam. Looks like a ransomware c2 domain

[–] carrylex@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

For anyone wondering xn--gckvb8fzb.com is マリウス.com

Also: Maybe they should get a "normal" domain when you post english articles...

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Does the url not resolve on certain browsers or something? I usually just copy/paste or use a firefox plugin to generate posts for lemmy/piefed/fediverse.

[–] carrylex@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

It resolves well but punnycode is disabled in some browsers or security enhanced profiles, so that you can easier detect punnycode domains that try to fake other domains.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Im not familiar with punnycode. Interesting.

[–] sludgewife@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago

it's punycode

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's not federated tho?

What do they mean when they call it that?

[–] grue@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Is metasearch really the best we can do? What about YaCy, or something else more like that?

[–] ArchEngel@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks for posting, both a great reminder to try setting this up on my unraid, and also to add the RSS feed of that site to Feeder.

[–] pipes@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

I just added it too, I had read a few articles of them already

[–] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Or how about YaCy. It's self-hostable & you can have your own web index and start your own web-crawler.

It's peer-to-peer too

[–] motruck@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is exactly what I came here to find. Thank you for posting it. If I can be so bold selfhosters should really be leaning this way searxng is great but it still uses big tech.

The other thing we need is a way to identify good crawling agents or *smol agents over corporate bots that just steal content.

If selfhosters can unite and build a good index perhaps searching can go back to the way it was vs a vector to sell you more and collect your data.

[–] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 weeks ago

You know what else I like ? Fossil

It's a FOSS alternative to Git itself, their official site itself is a self-hosted instance of Fossil.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

I personally love yacy.

[–] 044en17rl@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How good are the results compared to Google/Duckduckgo?

[–] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

You make your own index with this one

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Brave is a search engine?
That's news to me.

[–] elcroqueta@lemmy.cafe 3 points 2 weeks ago

Brave have they’re own search engine

[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

it's no kagi, but its ok

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago