Growth · alternatives · 2026
22 alternatives to I made a search engine for the indieweb
Hi there! I made a project for pure joy called Indieseas.net. I made it because I disliked how search engines completely ignore smaller websites, prioritizing ads and businesses. That said, I decided to make my very own search engine! But, how could I keep business websites outside the system? The solution were 88x31 buttons. These are images or gifs that were used back in the days to connect websites between eachother. This was useful because search engines weren't very bad in the times. Thankfully, people still use them a lot nowadays! So, I whipped up a program in Typescript using Bun…
Below are 22 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
I saw a comment here about how there are so many indexes of indie sites, blogs, etc but there wasn't an index of all the indexes. So I built it. It doesn't require a log in, just go browse! I've curated about 30 or so, but there is a submission form if there are ones I am missing. Also happy to take UI improvements because I am not great in that area!
May 2026 · theindex.fyi · its alternatives →
- 2IB
Hi HN, For the last 18 months, I've been working solo on building a completely independent search engine from scratch. Today, I'm opening it up for beta testing and would love to get your feedback. The project powers two public sites from the same 2-billion-page index: Searcha.Page: A session-aware search engine that uses a persistent browser key (not a cookie) for better context. Seek.Ninja: A 100% stateless, privacy-first version with no identifiers at all. The entire stack is self-hosted on a single ~$4k bare-metal EPYC server in my laundry room (no cloud, no VC funding). The search…
2025 · its alternatives →
- 3
Hi, folks. How would you define the "Golden Age" of the internet? In my opinion, it’s when people ran personal websites, blogs, or portfolios to share thoughts and stories. These websites could be unstable, slow, or "ugly", but they were the true digital gardens of individuals, making the internet colorful. It's such a pity that most of the content from independent websites is hidden in the corner. Therefore, I built RawWeb (https://rawweb.org) to index all these hidden gems. It collects content through feeds (RSS, Atom) and sorts the results by relevance. It also features an OPML…
2024 · rawweb.org · its alternatives →
- 4
Hey folks, There has been some talk about search engines here so I thought maybe I'd share a new project I'm working on. Built it partly to help me sell my own projects. Still a lot of work to be done but would be happy to get feedback. Very early phase so don't trust your life with it. Cheers --- Edit: if anyone needs a free/no CC account just DM me on https://www.linkedin.com/in/crufter/
2024 · singulatron.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Hi HN, I’m pleased to release my “surf engine” to the public for you to try. This is might be for you if you’ve grown frustrated with commercialised SERPs, and want to find the other websites are (still) out there. Kudos to Marginalia Search for showing that it’s possible to build a search engine as a hobbyist: https://search.marginalia.nu/ Feedback of all kinds very welcome! Ali
2022 · highbrow.se · its alternatives →
- 6
I built Morph, an experimental fullstack HTML-first library for Deno, Node, and Bun. Everything returns HTML, not JSON. No React, no Vite — just plain HTML with server-side rendering. No build steps, no preprocessors, no complex configs — everything runs from a single file. Perfect for Telegram Web Apps, internal tools, simple admin panels, dashboards, or anywhere a full-blown SPA feels like overkill. Important: I built this entirely for myself — to solve my own problems. I hate complex frontend. I hate writing it. And I don’t want to waste time on it. But maybe it’ll help you too.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7IH
Hello HN, I had some christmas free time over the last two weeks (Merry Christmas btw ;-)) and used that time to completely recreate the website of my app[1]. I used all the fancy new tools. I didn't know some of them when I started. What was my goal? * Pretty website * Blazing fast * Mobile first * SSR * Webp support * Generally all the best website practices (high lighthouse score) What did I use? * Tailwindcss (https://tailwindcss.com/) * Tailwind Components (https://tailwindui.com/) * React (https://reactjs.org/) * ViteJs…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 8
GIF.new▲18i use GIFs a lot in my personal/professional life and so I'm pretty passionate about the topic :P about a month ago I found out that this domain was available and couldn't believe it. Waited a good 3 weeks to pull the trigger on buying it (which, btw is hella expensive by default) and in the meantime, hopped from one idea to another on what it should house. original idea was to build some kind of prompt-to-GIF service but very soon realised that i can't sustain the AI bill on my budget (top contender was to use runway). then came the idea of animating charts from data (obvious: i work…
2025 · gif.new · its alternatives →
- 9
Hey HN! Just want to share a project of mine called Giggle. It uses Google's Programmable Search Engine service to apply allow- and block-lists to your searches in an easy way. I've shared it before[0] but just went through and refreshed/refactored a ton of things. Two things to note from the changes are it no longer uses Puppeteer for Google login and the license is now MIT. Happy to answer any questions! [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31067354
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Hey Hacker News, I'm the maker of Kopage, a free & self-hosted Website Builder. While working on new, cool features (AI, of course), it would be great to hear some HN feedback :) Thanks, Simon
2024 · kopage.com · its alternatives →
- 11
seofor.dev▲11Hi everyone! This is just me scratching my own itch, but since every time I build an app or a website I spend hours wondering how to make it not invisible to the world, I thought I'd build an SEO app that perfectly fits my needs. Most SEO tools are designed for agencies and copywriters, the usual pricing is simply too high for me, and there are just too many features that I don't need. I haven't found one that can crawl my local web server and that synergizes with my AI tools, so I made it myself. What I need is an app that tells me how to make my pages fully optimized, on what keywords to…
2025 · seofor.dev · its alternatives →
- 12MF
Progressive Web App, "Finding Nora": https://nora.now.sh/ It was also my first attempt at TypeScript + React. Preliminary conclusion: Getting started is a bit slower and the code more verbose, but refactoring become sooo much easier. And: Almost no need to reload and debug anymore. Once TypeScript is satisfied with my code it generally just works. Source code and more information can be found here: https://github.com/vnglst/finding-nora
2018 · its alternatives →
- 13
I've been having a blast making multiple mini apps that run in the browser. I've been trying to see how far I can go without having a backend and relying on other services. I wrote these for fun and wanted to know what folks think.
Jun 2026 · joeheyming.github.io · its alternatives →
- 14MF
Here is the link: http://www.wikihowtodo.com I know a lot of geeks share the same dream -- build the next kick-ass todo-list/project management system. So do I. However, as I was quite positive that my web development skill is worse than 99% of developers' in this community, I decided to build something simple, useless but unique. So I built this. Basically it's a Wikihow scraper, nothing more. It gives you a place to store interesting Wikihow articles and yes, they are converted into todo lists. I know this site is not that good, but I still need your guys' feedback. For example, as I am a…
2010 · wikihowtodo.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Hey HN! I develop browser extensions, I suck at web design, and I've been exploring AI/LLMs. With my new found free-time since dropping work hours, I've developed a Design Copilot browser extension [0]. It does what it says on the tin - you choose a part of your website and the tool gives you instant expert design feedback - "change this font to that, add this much whitespace, use brighter colours .... etc" The tool is completely 100% free to use, its powered by bringing your own AI API Key, and the current LLM it uses is Google Gemini 1.5 Pro. I've yet to hit the free rate-limit and I…
2024 · old.reddit.com · its alternatives →
- 16IM
Hi HN! I've created [UFreeTools](https://www.ufreetools.com/), a collection of developer utilities (60+ tools and growing) that's completely free, ad-free, and runs entirely in the browser. No data leaves your device - everything is processed locally. ## Background As a developer, I found myself constantly searching for simple utilities like JSON formatters, UUID generators, and color pickers. Most existing options were cluttered with ads, required sign-ups, or sent data to servers. I wanted clean, fast tools that respected privacy. So I built UFreeTools as a modern SPA using…
2025 · ufreetools.com · its alternatives →
- 17IM
I kept seeing more and more Product Hunt alternatives pop up, so I started tracking them in a spreadsheet to potentially use for future launches. The list was sitting at around 80 sites when I decided to deep dive and see how many more I could find. So I then built IndieLaunch: 250+ directories to help you launch your startup. It's free to use and includes Domain Rating (DR) and traffic info so you can pick the right spot to get the most eyes on your launch.
2024 · indielaun.ch · its alternatives →
- 18IM
Hey everyone! I'm really excited to share a side project I've been pouring my heart into lately. As a developer with over five years of experience, I've taken on my fair share of freelance web development projects. In the beginning, I always coded everything from scratch, but as I juggled more projects simultaneously, I started using Webflow to save time. While Webflow was definitely a lifesaver, I couldn't help but wish for an even faster way to set up a website – something that would allow me to start with a template and then easily customize it to my heart's content. The problem with most…
2024 · instawebai.com · its alternatives →
- 19
wsgrok▲7I built it for myself because ngrok didn't let me add one more domain unless I paid $12 more. I probably should've looked for alternatives before building my own, but my grudge got in the way . Once I started, I wanted to make it better than the other options. Silly, I know. No one probably cares. I plan to open source it sometime next year because I’ve got other projects to finish first. It's free until I deplete my cloud credits, then it will switch to a tier-based model with a free option.
Jan 2026 · wsgrok.com · its alternatives →
- 20PN
>>>>> TimeForZen.com <<<<< This took months to put together. Learning javascript, using the sound manager 2 api. Finding the perfect creative commons photos on flickr. It's such a ridiculously simple site (just a curated list of music) but I went through hell debugging and getting it to work. I learned an extreme amount. My advice to designers who can't code, keep it simple, just get it done don't worry about optimization, don't worry about a backend. Code everything manually if you have to. I've kept it simple out of necessity. I'm a designer, not a…
2012 · its alternatives →
- 21IV
Hi HN, I’ve launched the website for my upcoming side business - a little Windows desktop application that I developed to scratch a personal itch. This is a significant milestone for me as it's both my first ever website and side business. The website itself is built using Tailwind CSS with plain JavaScript and some PHP scripts to handle the sign-up forms. I used a lot of ChatGPT for all of it. It's hosted on the the Hetzner level 1 webhosting plan costing EUR 1.90 per month and put behind Cloudflare. I am actually quite curious how this setting will hold up against the traffic from this…
2024 · iconpainter.io · its alternatives →
- 22IB
I built Meepo – a smarter search engine for a local (South African) fashion and homeware store. I have no affiliation with said store. I built this for myself, because I was frustrated at how difficult it was to find what I wanted with the existing search engine + I was curious how well CLIP (a relatively new AI technique with open source code and models) would work here. I think it works quite well! It's much more forgiving than the original search engine. I don't have to guess what exactly they decided to label a particular item. But what I like even more is that it works quite well for…
2022 · meepo.shop · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →