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Whoosh

Pure-Python full-text indexing and search library

Search Engines ★ 363 stars Easy setup BSD-2-Clause

Whoosh is a fast, featureful full-text indexing and searching library implemented entirely in Python. Developers embed it to add search to Python applications without external dependencies.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Pure Python search
  • No external services
  • Ranking and faceting
  • Spell correction

Pros & cons

Strengths

  • Zero infrastructure
  • Easy Python integration

Trade-offs

  • Slower at large scale
  • Library only

Is Whoosh secure?

OSV.dev has no published security advisories for Whoosh's repository. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

Whoosh replaces

Self-hosted Elasticsearch alternatives

Health badge

Maintain Whoosh? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 11 · at risk

Markdown
[![SelfHostIndex health score for Whoosh](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/whoosh-search.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/whoosh-search/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/whoosh-search/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/whoosh-search.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for Whoosh"></a>
reStructuredText
.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/whoosh-search.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for Whoosh
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/whoosh-search/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

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