head to head · open source
SearXNG vs Quickwit
SearXNG has 37,253 GitHub stars, 3,396 forks, 215 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Quickwit has 11,651 stars, 597 forks, 815 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SearXNG leads on adoption by 220% (37,253 vs 11,651 stars). SearXNG is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; Quickwit is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. SearXNG has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Quickwit 5%. Quickwit was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (search-engine), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| SearXNG | Quickwit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 597 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SearXNG if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Quickwit if
- You want the Quickwit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Quickwit fits your workflow better
About SearXNG
SearXNG is a free, self hostable metasearch engine that aggregates results from more than 270 search services and databases, and it is meant for people and organizations that want web search without being tracked or profiled.
read the full SearXNG overview →
About Quickwit
Quickwit is an open source search engine written in Rust under the Apache 2.0 license. It is positioned for observability workloads, especially log management and distributed tracing, and it names metrics support as a roadmap item. The project lives in the cloud native search engine ecosystem and is designed to search data stored in object storage.
read the full Quickwit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SearXNG or Quickwit more popular?
SearXNG has 37,253 GitHub stars and Quickwit has 11,651. SearXNG has the larger community by that measure.
Are SearXNG and Quickwit free?
Both are open source. SearXNG is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Quickwit under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SearXNG and Quickwit?
SearXNG is written in Python and Quickwit in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, SearXNG or Quickwit?
Choose SearXNG if you want the larger community (37,253 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Quickwit if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.