Self-hosting SearXNG: Your Own Private Search Engine

Every time you search Google, your query is logged, profiled, and tied to your identity across devices. Over time this builds a detailed picture of your interests, health concerns, political leanings, and more — all stored on someone else’s servers.

SearXNG is a free, open-source metasearch engine that solves this differently. Instead of running its own search index, it forwards your query to multiple search engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, and many others), strips out the tracking, and returns the combined results to you. The upstream search engines only see a request from your server — not from you.

By self-hosting SearXNG you get:

• Privacy — no search profiling, no filter bubble, no ads
• Control — you pick which engines to use, how results are ranked, and who can access the instance
• Quality — results aggregated from multiple engines often beat any single source
• No vendor lock-in — your search engine can’t be shut down, enshittified, or acquired

This post walks through setting up SearXNG with Docker, verifying it works locally, then exposing it securely over Tailscale so you can reach it from any device. (Adapted from Replace Google with SearXNG - a privacy respecting, self-hosted search engine)

Prerequisites: Docker on Linux

First, install Docker on your Linux machine:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh

After installation, add your user to the Docker group so you don’t need sudo every time:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker

You can find the full post-installation steps in the official Docker docs.

Install Tailscale

To reach your SearXNG instance from anywhere (not just your local network), install Tailscale and connect the machine to your tailnet:

sudo tailscale up --ssh

We’ll use tailscale serve later to expose SearXNG over HTTPS — but first, let’s get SearXNG running.

Setting Up SearXNG with Docker

Follow the official SearXNG Docker installation guide.

1. Create the environment

mkdir -p ./searxng/core-config/
cd ./searxng/

curl -fsSL \
    -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/searxng/searxng/master/container/docker-compose.yml \
    -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/searxng/searxng/master/container/.env.example

2. Configure the environment

Copy and edit the .env file:

cp -i .env.example .env
nano .env

At minimum, set a secret key for cookie signing. Generate one with:

openssl rand -hex 32

Then paste the output into .env:

SEARXNG_SECRET="<paste the hex string here>"

3. Start the services

docker compose up -d

4. Verify it works locally

Before going further, check that SearXNG is actually running. Open a browser and visit your server’s Tailscale domain over plain HTTP on port 8080:

http://my-server.tailabcd1234.ts.net:8080

You should see the SearXNG search page. Try a search to confirm results are coming back.

If something’s wrong, check the container logs:

docker compose logs -f

Common issues:

• Port conflict — if port 8080 is already in use, edit docker-compose.yml to change the port mapping (e.g. 8081:8080)
• Container not starting — run docker compose ps to see the container status, and docker compose logs for error messages
• No results — some engines may be temporarily blocked; check core-config/settings.yml to enable/disable specific engines

To stop the services:

docker compose down

Expose SearXNG over Tailscale

Once SearXNG works locally, you can expose it to your tailnet over HTTPS. No need to open any public ports — Tailscale handles TLS and access control.

sudo tailscale serve --bg 8080

This creates an HTTPS endpoint like:

https://my-server.tailabcd1234.ts.net

Where:

• my-server — your machine’s Tailscale machine name (set during tailscale up, or changed later in the Tailscale admin console)
• tailabcd1234.ts.net — your tailnet’s MagicDNS domain (unique to your account)

You can rename both the machine name and the tailnet domain from the Tailscale admin console at any time.

Now set your SEARXNG_BASE_URL in .env to match:

SEARXNG_BASE_URL="https://my-server.tailabcd1234.ts.net"

Then restart SearXNG for the change to take effect:

docker compose down && docker compose up -d

Visit the https:// URL from any device on your tailnet to confirm it works.

Customize SearXNG Settings

Edit core-config/settings.yml to tailor SearXNG to your needs. The official settings documentation covers everything in detail, but here are some options worth knowing about:

• engines — enable, disable, or reorder search engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, etc.)
• server.limiter — rate limiting to protect your instance from abuse; useful if you share the instance with others
• server.image_proxy — proxy image results through your server so upstream CDNs don’t see your IP
• ui.theme — pick a theme (simple, ocavue, etc.)
• search.default_lang — set a default language for results

After editing, restart:

docker compose restart

Set SearXNG as Your Default Search Engine in Chrome

Once your instance is running, you can configure Chrome to use it as the default search engine. Follow this guide for step-by-step instructions.

Recap

That’s it — you now have a fully private search engine under your control. No more sending every query to Google.

Going Further

• SearXNG on GitHub — source code, issues, and contributions
• Local Deep Research — an open-source research tool that uses SearXNG under the hood to retrieve and synthesize information from the web