# SearXNG 76 Hacker News commenters recommended SearXNG and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (6 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Self-hosted metasearch engine that blends results from many engines without ads, tracking or AI summaries. Common caveat: upstream engines often rate limit or block it. ## Why people recommend it - Combines results from multiple engines (5 comments): "it also helps really well against search engine enshittification by raising search results higher when they're received from multiple engines" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46454206)) "I highly recommend self-hosting a meta-search engine to get away from any single provider without losing the benefits of either." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186468)) "searx results are way more relevant to what I’m actually looking for than a single engine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780688)) - Good tool for AI agents (4 comments): "I run a searXNG and Crawl4AI (and few ancillaries like jina rerank etc) in my homelab so I can tell my AI to perform live internet searches" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46353048)) "I've since given my agent access to Exa, Tavily, and SearXNG so it can filter through today's low quality search results for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49871581)) "Hook this in as a tool and the agent can answer a lot of questions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49669955)) - Keeps searches private and local (3 comments): "Easy to run in docker and helps both get better search results and keeps your search history local and in your control." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48785703)) "I run a searXNG server so it searches multiple engines for me anonymously!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47187406)) "You'll get more representative results, no tracking and no captchas." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041705)) - No ads or AI in results (3 comments): "having the ability to search and avoid things like yk, small AI models being installed on my PC without my consent, is awesome" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782158)) "no AI in results and I don't see things I search for in ads on other platforms now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48379067)) "if you try searxng, you can at least get rid of things like ai reviews in no time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783617)) ## What people warn about - Frequent rate limiting and captchas (5 comments): "I have been using SearXNG as my main search engine for a while (not for AI stuff), and it's been great up until 2-3 months ago when it started being rate limite/captcha'd frequently." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160014)) "searxng gets rate limited fast and the results are inconsistent depending on what providers it can reach at any given time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50139972)) "Even from a residential IP, you might get a handful of Google searches before getting backed off." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140598)) - Engines often fail or slow (3 comments): "issues with engines constantly failing or being slow since day 1 of using SearXNG" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780444)) "most public searxng instances seem to have nowadays, which is that they don't work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45854726)) "Often have to go through the preferences to deselect search engines that don't work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48791527)) - Privacy gains are questionable (2 comments): "I'm of two minds regarding the privacy gained by sending my searches to 280 companies instead of just one." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781356)) "SearXNG is different though, because it still relies on a data-harvesting, ad-driven online economy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781049)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Kagi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kagi.md): 732 recommend - [DuckDuckGo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/duckduckgo.md): 286 recommend - [Brave Search](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brave-search.md): 67 recommend - [Startpage](https://hackerapproved.com/p/startpage.md): 25 recommend - [Qwant](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qwant.md): 22 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "SearXNG", https://hackerapproved.com/p/searxng/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).