SearXNG is federated, and as such is hosted by several instances, public and private. Private instances are hosted on a local network, or run on the user's desktop computer itself, and are designed to be used by one person or a small number of people. Public instances are hosted on public web servers and are designed to be used by anyone like a typical search engine.[4][2] A list of public instances is available at searx.space.[5]
Features
Categorical searching
SearXNG can separate results into multiple categories, including the standard categories of "Web, "Images," "Videos," and "News," as well as the non-standard categories of "Social Media," "Music," "Files," "IT," and "Science."[6]
Customization
SearXNG features several customization options, which can be configured server-side or client-side, including filtering which engines to use, content filtering, and language preferences.[4]
Engines
As a metasearch engine, SearXNG functions by sending queries to upstream search engines and returning them to the user. Engines include Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Qwant.[5][7] More than 70 different search engines are supported.[2]
Privacy
SearXNG removes private data from requests sent to search services. Result pages do not include advertisements or referral links.[8] SearXNG itself stores little to no information that can be used to identify users.[3][2]
Tor compatibility
Search queries can be routed through the Tor network.[4]
