SHSelfHostIndex

PISA vs SearXNG

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
PI PISA Performant indexes and search for large text collections VS SE SearXNG Privacy-respecting metasearch engine aggregating many sources
FeaturePISASearXNG
CategorySearch EnginesSearch Engines
LicenseApache-2.0AGPL-3.0
LanguageC++Python
Setup difficultyHardEasy
Min. RAM1,024 MB256 MB
Deploymentsource, binarydocker, kubernetes, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 1,054★ 35,091
First released20172021
ReplacesElasticsearchGoogle Search, Bing

Why pick each one

Choose PISA if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • Active community (1.1k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C++
PISA details

Choose SearXNG if…

  • Strong privacy guarantees
  • Highly configurable
SearXNG details

Frequently asked questions

Is PISA or SearXNG better?

SearXNG is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider PISA if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are PISA and SearXNG free and open-source?

Yes. PISA is licensed under Apache-2.0 and SearXNG under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run PISA and SearXNG with Docker?

PISA: check the project docs for container support. SearXNG: yes.

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