whw23/searxng-http-mcp

Quick Start ·
Features ·
Architecture ·
Comparison ·
Usage ·
MCP Tools ·
Client Config ·
Plugin ·
Contributing
A self-contained MCP server that wraps SearXNG — a free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine that aggregates results from 200+ search engines.
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🚀 Quick Start
**Server mode** — deploy once, connect from any client:
Then connect your client to http://YOUR_HOST:YOUR_PORT/mcp/. To enable API key auth, see Authentication.
**Local mode** — no server needed, run directly in your client:
Add this as a stdio MCP server in your client — see Client Configuration for details.
**uvx mode** — if you already have SearXNG running (install guide):
Set SEARXNG_URL to point to your SearXNG instance (default: http://127.0.0.1:8080).
✨ Features
Search
- 🔍 200+ search engines — Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, and more via SearXNG
- 📂 30+ categories — news, images, videos, science, IT, and more
- 📄 Multi-page fanout — up to 5 pages per call
- 💡 Autocomplete suggestions — discover relevant search terms
- 🗂 Engine discovery — query available engines grouped by category
- 🎯 Token-efficient — results trimmed to essentials
Infrastructure
- 📦 Self-contained — SearXNG built into Docker image
- 🔄 Triple transport — HTTP server, Docker stdio, and uvx standalone
- 🔐 Authentication — x-api-key + HTTP Basic Auth
- 🌐 Reverse proxy — SearXNG Web UI on the same port
- ⚡ Dynamic tool descriptions — live category lists injected at startup
- 📐 Rich JSON Schema — enum constraints, range limits, and descriptions on every parameter
🏛 Architecture
📊 Comparison with Alternatives
Why these five?
There are 20+ SearXNG MCP servers and many more general-purpose search MCPs. Most SearXNG wrappers only expose a basic search tool, leaving SearXNG's categories, autocomplete, and engine metadata unused. We picked five alternatives that each represent a distinct category:
- **88plug/searxng-mcp** — richest tool surface among SearXNG MCPs (7 tools: rendered fetch, research mode, parallel queries)
- **ihor/mcp-searxng** — most GitHub stars among SearXNG MCPs
- **open-webSearch** — top free multi-engine alternative outside the SearXNG ecosystem (Bing, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Brave, etc.)
- **exa-mcp-server** — most popular commercial search API MCP
- **Perplexity MCP** — commercial AI-powered search, highest star count in the search MCP space
Feature
✨ This project
88plug/searxng-mcp
ihor/mcp-searxng
open-webSearch
exa-mcp-server
Perplexity MCP
Search
200+ engines via SearXNG ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
30+ search categories ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
Multi-page fanout ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
Autocomplete suggestions ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
Engine discovery tool ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
Dynamic tool descriptions ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
Infrastructure
Self-contained (built-in search) ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ N/A N/A
Zero-install Docker deploy ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ ❌ ❌
HTTP + stdio transport ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Authentication ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅
Web UI reverse proxy ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
AI Coding Agent Plugin ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
General
Free & open source ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ (paid API) ❌ (paid API)
Privacy (self-hosted) ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌
Language Python Python Node.js TypeScript TypeScript TypeScript
GitHub Stars
Why fewer tools?
MCP is designed for composition — clients connect multiple specialized servers, each doing one thing well. Some alternatives bundle URL fetching, rendered page extraction, multi-query fan-out, or research modes into the search server. We keep the tool surface to three (search, autocomplete, engine discovery) by design: