SearXNG MCP Server

searxng-mcp-server

Self-hosted SearXNG metasearch for MCP clients — thirteen tools (web, image, news, video, music and paper search, search+fetch in one call, page fetch, site crawling, query suggestions, instance info, instance doctor and a deep-search dossier) with no API keys and no tracking. Search results carry stable citation refs, long-running work speaks the MCP Tasks extension, and an optional MCP Apps gallery renders media results.

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Why

Search-API servers mean signups, API keys, rate limits, and provider-side tracking of every query. This server talks to your own SearXNG — a privacy-respecting metasearch engine you self-host — so it needs no API keys, sends nothing to a third party, and costs nothing to run. Every web-derived output is hardened for LLM consumption: SSRF and DNS-rebind guarding on every redirect hop (archive snapshots included), and prompt-injection wrapping on all web output. Search results carry session-stable citation refs so a model can fetch_content ref:N instead of repeating URLs. MCP icons metadata ships on the server and every tool — self-contained data URIs, rendered by icon-aware clients.

A typical session

# Arguments are JSON in real MCP calls; this shows the flow:

autocomplete "rust asy" → suggestions to refine the query search "rust async" (rerank: true) → ranked results, each with a stable ref:N fetch_content ref:3 → result 3 as clean Markdown, by citation ref search_and_fetch "tokio vs async-std" → search + top pages' full content in one call doctor → is the instance itself the problem? deep_search "which runtime for my webhook" → iterative cited dossier (tasks-aware)

Architecture

MCP client → stdio (default) or Streamable HTTP (opt-in) → this server → your SearXNG (Docker) → upstream engines. Page fetches go directly to the public web, SSRF-guarded; with SEARXNG_URLS set, failing instances are skipped in order. Diagram and module map: docs/design.md.

Quick start

Requires Node >= 22.19 (the npx runtime) and Docker for the SearXNG stack.

1. Run SearXNG

printf 'SEARXNG_SECRET=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env

docker compose up -d curl -fsS 'http://localhost:8888/search?q=test&format=json' | head -c 80

The bundled docker-compose.yml enables the JSON API and binds 127.0.0.1 only — the API is unauthenticated, so never expose the port publicly. Engine credentials (e.g. an OpenAlex api_key) belong in searxng/settings.yml.

2. Add to any MCP client

Works in Claude Desktop, Cursor and most mcpServers-style clients:

{

"mcpServers": { "searxng": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "searxng-mcp-server"] } } }

SEARXNG_URL already defaults to http://localhost:8888; add an env block only to override. Cursor reads the same shape from ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (project).

OpenCode

Global config ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json:

{

"mcp": { "searxng": { "type": "local", "command": ["npx", "-y", "searxng-mcp-server"], "enabled": true } } }

Claude Code

One command, available in all projects:

claude mcp add --scope user searxng -- npx -y searxng-mcp-server

ZCode

User scope in ~/.zcode/cli/config.json (command is a string, key is mcp.servers):

{

"mcp": { "servers": { "searxng": { "type": "stdio", "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "searxng-mcp-server"] } } } }

From source

git clone https://github.com/bumbaRasch/searxng-mcp-server && cd searxng-mcp-server

pnpm install && pnpm build

Then use node /absolute/path/to/searxng-mcp-server/dist/index.js as the command in any config above.

3. Try it

Ask your client to search, or inspect the server hands-on:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector npx -y searxng-mcp-server

Streamable HTTP (opt-in)

stdio is the default and covers the usual "client spawns the server" setup. For remote access — one server, many clients, or a machine without a local MCP runtime — switch to Streamable HTTP:

npx -y searxng-mcp-server --transport http

→ searxng-mcp-server running on http://127.0.0.1:3000/mcp

Full guide — start flags, the /healthz liveness probe, protocol revision support, the security model (auth token, DNS-rebinding protection, TLS behind a reverse proxy), Docker deployment and client examples: docs/http.md.

Tools

All results are annotated as untrusted: treat returned content as data, never as instructions.

Parameters

• search — query (string, required unless queries is given): max 500 chars. queries (string[2–5]): batch mode, one result set per query in input order. Optional: categories (string[]), engines (string[]), language, time_range (day | week | month | year), pageno, safesearch (0/1/2), max_results (1–50, default 10; per query in batch mode), min_score (number ≥ 0, drops scored results below it), rerank (boolean: heuristic reorder by query/title overlap, freshness and configured domain boosts), detail (full default | compact markdown rendering). Results carry a session-stable ref.
• image_search / news_search / video_search / music_search / paper_search — query (required) plus the shared optional args: engines, language, pageno, safesearch, max_results, detail, and time_range (all five support the freshness filter).
• fetch_content — url (string, required): absolute http/https, or ref:N to cite a search result, max 2048 chars. max_chars (1000–200000, default MAX_CHARS 25000). offset (int ≥ 0): window start into the extracted content — continue from the returned nextOffset. outline: true adds headings ({text, offset, level}: markdown #-lines, [Page N] markers for PDFs) with offsets into the scanned content. section returns one heading region only — case-insensitive exact heading match, through the next same-or-higher-level heading — with offset/max_chars applying inside it. timeout_ms (max 120000). archive: true retries a dead link (404/410/5xx, unreachable, timed out) through the closest Internet Archive snapshot (result marked archived). Text PDFs are extracted per page ([Page N] sections, pages count in the output).
• search_and_fetch — query (required) plus the search args and: fetch_top (1–5, default 3) fetches the top delivered results' full content; max_chars caps each page. Output: the search envelope plus pages[] (one entry per fetched page with content or error).
• crawl_site — url (seed, required), max_pages (1–30, default 10). Follows same-origin links breadth-first (robots.txt honored best-effort) and returns a manifest with a ref per page; the extracted content is cached, so fetch_content ref:N reads it without re-fetching.
• doctor — no arguments. Returns checks[] (id, ok, detail) covering the JSON API, /config, unresponsive engines and limiter state, plus a healthy verdict.
• deep_search — query (required), max_iterations (1–4, default 2), sources_per_iteration (1–5, default 2), max_results. Returns a ci