Vane vs YaCy
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted search engines options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Vane | YaCy |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | ≈5-minute setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 86 · Excellent |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 36,903 | ★ 4,044 |
| First released | 2024 | 2003 |
| Replaces | Google Search | Google Search, Bing |
What are Vane and YaCy?
Vane
Perplexica is an open-source AI-powered answer engine that searches the web and uses language models to provide sourced answers. It can run fully self-hosted alongside SearXNG and local LLMs.
- AI answers with cited sources
- Works with local LLMs
- Multiple focus modes
- Uses SearXNG as a backend
YaCy
YaCy is a free, decentralized search engine built on peer-to-peer networking. Each installation crawls the web and shares its index with other peers, creating a search network with no central authority.
- Peer-to-peer decentralized index
- Built-in web crawler
- No central server or censorship
- Can run as a private intranet search
Vane vs YaCy: key differences
Vane is written in TypeScript, while YaCy is built with Java. Licensing differs — MIT for Vane versus GPL-2.0 for YaCy. YaCy is the more established project (first released 2003), while Vane arrived in 2024. Vane has the considerably larger community, at 36,903 GitHub stars versus 4,044.
Why pick each one
Choose Vane if…
- Self-hosted AI search
- Simple Docker deployment
- Free and open source
Watch out for
- LLM backend required
- Young project
Choose YaCy if…
- Truly decentralized
- Censorship resistant
Watch out for
- Index quality varies
- Java resource use
Frequently asked questions
Is Vane or YaCy better?
Neither is universally better. Vane has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Vane and YaCy free and open-source?
Yes. Vane is licensed under MIT and YaCy under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Vane and YaCy with Docker?
Vane: yes. YaCy: yes.