Open source search projects
Every project in the registry tagged search, ranked by real GitHub adoption.
Lightning-fast search for your applications
Privacy-first metasearch across 270+ sources
Open-source search and analytics at enterprise scale
Lightning-fast open source search engine for big data
Full-text & vector search at the edge.
Browser extension for reverse image search, available for Chrome, Edge and Safari
Open-source message stream built on Postgres
Full-text search API with real-time indexing and crawling
Self-hosted SERP API for Google, Bing, Yandex, and more
⚡️ A fully-featured and blazing-fast JavaScript API client to interact with Algolia.
Related tags
Frequently asked questions
How many open source search projects are there?
This registry tracks 10 projects tagged search, with 143,509 GitHub stars between them. The most-adopted is Meilisearch at 59,317 stars.
Are these search projects free to use?
Yes — 8 of the 10 carry an explicit open-source licence across 4 distinct licences, so there is no licence fee. Where a project also sells a hosted or enterprise version, the self-hosted path remains free.
Which search project should I choose?
The list above is ranked by GitHub stars, but stars measure attention rather than fit. Check three things on each card: the licence (permissive versus copyleft), the language it is written in, and the last-push date — a high-star project that has not been pushed in a year is a liability.
Are these search projects still maintained?
9 of the 10 were pushed in the last 90 days, and every card shows its exact last-push date so you can see the rest. Sort your shortlist by that date before committing to a migration.