Whoogle Search 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 | Whoogle Search | YaCy |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 15 · At risk | 86 · Excellent |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| Category | Search Engines | Search Engines |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Language | Python | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 11,570 | ★ 4,044 |
| First released | 2020 | 2003 |
| Replaces | Google Search | Google Search, Bing |
What are Whoogle Search and YaCy?
Whoogle Search
Whoogle Search is a lightweight, self-hosted metasearch engine that returns Google results without ads, JavaScript, tracking or cookies. It offers a clean, minimal interface focused on privacy.
- Ad-free Google results
- No JavaScript or tracking
- Custom theming and config
- Works as a browser search engine
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
Whoogle Search vs YaCy: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Whoogle Search's repository is archived and no longer developed, while YaCy is actively maintained. Whoogle Search is written in Python, while YaCy is built with Java. Licensing differs — MIT for Whoogle Search versus GPL-2.0 for YaCy. Whoogle Search is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for YaCy. YaCy is the more established project (first released 2003), while Whoogle Search arrived in 2020. Whoogle Search has the considerably larger community, at 11,570 GitHub stars versus 4,044.
Why pick each one
Choose Whoogle Search if…
- Very lightweight
- Clean minimal results
Watch out for
- Depends on scraping Google
Choose YaCy if…
- Truly decentralized
- Censorship resistant
Watch out for
- Index quality varies
- Java resource use
Frequently asked questions
Is Whoogle Search or YaCy better?
Whoogle Search is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Whoogle Search if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Whoogle Search and YaCy free and open-source?
Yes. Whoogle Search is licensed under MIT and YaCy under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Whoogle Search and YaCy with Docker?
Whoogle Search: yes. YaCy: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Whoogle Search or YaCy?
Whoogle Search has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for YaCy. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.