# Lunr.js

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Lunr.js and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A lightweight client-side full-text search library for static sites, with fuzzy matching, wildcards and field queries. Critics note that the search data file can be large and slow page loads.

## Why people recommend it

- Simple, effective client-side search (1 comments): "It's simple and effective, but searching the whole content would have required loading more files than I was comfortable with." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46607357))
- Fuzzy search, wildcards and field queries (1 comments): "it has lots of options for things like different fields, complex queries, fuzzy searching and wildcards" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488934))
- Used in production at endoflife.date (1 comments): "We use at endoflife.date, and are fairly happy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46610432))

## What people warn about

- Large search data file slows page load (1 comments): "downloading and parsing almost 2MB file of search data creates some hiccups on website during load" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46607665))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Apache Lucene](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apache-lucene.md): 12 recommend
- [Tantivy](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tantivy.md): 8 recommend
- [PHP-fts](https://hackerapproved.com/p/php-fts.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Lunr.js", https://hackerapproved.com/p/lunr-js/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).