Summary

• Self-hosting a full search engine is borderline impossible for any one person.
• Most "self-hosted" search engines are metasearch engines that aggregate results or are based on P2P networks.
• Their search results are less accurate and reliable than Google.
• There are many privacy-focused alternatives to Google that are far more reliable and user-friendly than self-hosted search engines.

It's hard to stay private online, and it’s no secret that search engines like Google and Bing collect enormous amounts of user information. At times, their lack of transparency has landed them in hot water with regulators, leading to hefty fines.

Many users have turned to alternatives like DuckDuckGo to reclaim some privacy. Still, they remain at the mercy of a third party, leading many to wonder if they can self-host a search engine.

Self-hosting software is often praised for improving privacy, but as you’ll soon read in this article, the answer to self-hosting a search engine isn’t so clear-cut.

Why self-host?

There are many benefits

Personal self-hosted software and applications offer alternatives to cloud-based subscription services from big tech companies. For example, those wanting to ditch Dropbox may turn to a Nextcloud server, while those tired of streaming platforms' creeping monthly fees may opt for a Plex server. By decoupling themselves from third parties, users gain more control over their privacy, access greater customization, and shield their wallets from recurring subscription costs.

There are, of course, a few drawbacks to self-hosting. Most self-hosted software isn’t as feature-rich as products from big tech. Also, you’ll have to manage your own security and hardware and deal with the upfront investment cost.

Can you self-host a search engine?

Not in the traditional sense

Hosting a search engine would require vast resources, and it’s impractical for any one person. You’d first need to acquire an incredible amount of computing power to crawl and index the whole web effectively. Then, you’d have to worry about security, energy costs, hardware maintenance, and storage. Even if you have billions of dollars to spare, there are better ways to burn your money, like buying a social media platform. Suddenly, paying $12 monthly for Spotify doesn't sound too bad, eh?

With that said, you can still host a metasearch engine like SearXNG, or be a part of a decentralized search engine like YaCy. SearXNG aggregates search results from search engines like Google, but scrubs your queries of personal identifiable information. YaCy, on the other hand, is a peer-to-peer search engine that relies on a decentralized network of users to provide search results. In either case, you’ll still be relying on external resources.

Benefits and drawbacks to self-hosting a search engine

Those set on self-hosting a search engine will be rewarded for their commitment in several ways. We’ll be using SearXNG and YaCy as examples.

SearXNG

SearXNG benefits

SearXNG brings more features to SearX, an open-source metasearch engine. It pulls results from over 70 search engines like Google and Bing, and categorizes them into images, news, and videos, just like the popular search engines you're used to. You can self-host a private instance for personal use or deploy a public one to share with others.

By self-hosting SearXNG, you gain complete control over almost all settings in your search environment, down to its appearance. Additionally, you get better privacy since you not only get to choose what data to share, but also, SearXNG strips your queries of any personal information. There are even options to set up a fake browser profile to further prevent tracking. And as an open-source project supported by an active community, it's getting better every day.

SearXNG drawbacks

Some search engines consider queries sent through SearXNG instances bot traffic, triggering them to display captchas or outright block the requests. This can lead to missing or hidden results. While there isn’t a definitive list of search engines that explicitly block SearXNG traffic, Google is a well-known example.

Although SearXNG has an active support community, its development simply can’t rival that of big tech and its deep pockets. Compared to Google and Bing, SearXNG is far less robust and stable. If you run into a critical issue, the community forums will be your only source for troubleshooting.

Finally, if you’re using someone else’s SearXNG instance, you’ll always have to worry whether they are acting in good faith. This is less of a concern when self-hosting, but using a static IP will nullify some of the privacy benefits. You can install VPN or proxy queries through a service like Tor for anonymity, but both have a performance penalty. If you choose Tor, the major search engines will likely block your queries.

YaCy

YaCy benefits

YaCy is an open-source, decentralized search engine built on a peer-to-peer network. It relies on its peers (nodes) to crawl and index the web. Because it operates on a distributed architecture with equal-rights peers, no single entity controls all the information. This means better data permanence, strong redundancy, and no corporate interests to dictate its development.

Setting up YaCy only requires running the installation package on a PC — no special hardware is needed. Each YaCy-peer crawls and indexes the internet independently, so there’s no need to join a peer network to see results near you.

YaCy drawbacks

YaCy's search results are a bit inaccurate compared to Google or Bing, but that's to be expected. It's also far slower at pulling up the results as it takes time to sift through its indexes from different peers.

A major contributor to YaCy's search speed depends on the hardware of each node. Without big tech’s millions to build massive data centers, high query traffic can overburden YaCy’s P2P network, leading to slowdowns in displaying results. The same can happen if fewer people join the network; the fewer the number of nodes, the more constrained the computing resources.

As for search result quality, YaCy differs from the major search engines. Being a P2P search engine means less censorship, but it also means anything can appear in a search result, including dangerous and malicious information. Furthermore, without the resources to manage the search results, search poisoning is a bigger threat for YaCy than traditional search engines.

YaCy’s documentation on privacy and security is lacking for the average user. Its official FAQ states that it respects user privacy and only indexes publicly accessible pages. YaCy’s FAQ includes one line about distributing queries across a network of peers using a distributed hash table. This means that rather than storing raw search terms, YaCy shares hashed search results across multiple peers, making it nearly impossible to trace queries back to a specific user. The FAQ doesn’t explain much beyond that. To verify these claims, you’d have to read DHT’s YaCy’s class descriptions on YaCy’s API page.

It’s not for everyone

Self-hosting applications offer clear benefits: better privacy, greater customization, and wallet-friendly. However, when it comes to self-hosted search engines, these advantages are often outweighed by compromises in search speed, result quality, and even security.

SearXNG and YaCy are just two examples of self-hosted search engines. The few other options, such as SearX and Whoogle, share some or all of these drawbacks.

The primary motivation for self-hosting a search engine is to keep searches anonymous. Privacy-focused search services like DuckDuckGo and Startpage offer an easier alternative that anyone can access. A VPN can also help by masking your location. These tools — and many others — are far more user-friendly and reliable than self-hosting options. For most people, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.