SearXNG

About SearXNG

SearXNG is a metasearch engine that aggregates results from multiple search services and exposes them through an HTTP API. The API provides two endpoints, / and /search, both accessible via GET or POST, with GET parameters passed as URL query parameters and POST parameters sent as form data.

Queries are submitted through a required q parameter and passed through to the underlying external search services, meaning those services' own query syntax (such as site: filters) can be used. Additional optional parameters allow narrowing results by category, language, page number, time range, and safe search level. Results can be returned in JSON, CSV, or RSS format, though the desired format must be explicitly enabled in the instance's settings.yml configuration, and requesting a disabled format returns a 403 Forbidden error; many public instances disable these formats by default.

The product is aimed at developers and instance administrators who want to query a self-hosted or third-party SearXNG instance programmatically, integrating aggregated search results into other applications or workflows rather than using the instance's web interface directly.

Key features

• Provides a search API with GET and POST endpoints (/ and /search)
• Returns results in JSON, CSV, or RSS format
• Supports category-filtered search via comma-separated categories parameter
• Supports time range filtering (day, month, year) for supporting engines
• Supports safe search filtering with configurable levels
• Passes queries through to external search engines, preserving their query syntax

Frequently asked questions