Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Self-hosteable browser-based minimalist web-searching platform
MiniSearch is celebrating its 1st birthday! Exactly one year ago, I shared the initial version of this side-project here. Since then, there have been numerous changes under the hood. I use it daily as my default search engine and have done my best to make it useful. I hope it's interesting for you too!
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Self-hosteable browser-based minimalist web-searching platform launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
Hey everyone! I’m excited to announce the release of my last project, MiniSearch. I admire Perplexity.ai, Phind.com, You.com, Bing, Bard and all these search engines integrated with AI chatbots. And as a curious developer, I took the chance and created my own version. Using Web-LLM and Transformers.js to provide browser-based text-generation models on desktop and mobile, I built a minimalist self-hosted search app on which an AI analyses the results, comments on them and responds to your query summarising the info. In the backend, it still queries a real search engine, but besides that,…
2023 · huggingface.co · its alternatives →
- 2
Tiny and powerful JavaScript full-text search engine for browser and Node - lucaong/minisearch
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
A self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine - benbusby/whoogle-search
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
I made this site for myself, SimpleSearch.info, as new default browser page. I’m not sure if it actually _saves_ time or clicks (though, for me, it saves at least one click per search), but I find the search experience more pleasant. On desktop, it’s nice to just have these search bars as the first thing that pops up in a new window or tab vs clicking bookmarks in the toolbar or elsewhere then searching. Similarly, on mobile, I like just clicking on one icon for all my searches. The vast majority of my web browsing begins with a search or LLM query. I’m curious if this is helpful to anyone…
2025 · simplesearch.info · its alternatives →
- 5FS
Hi HN! This started late last year as an afternoon project to play around with ElasticSearch, and then I kept thinking of new features I wanted to add. I still have a lot of things I want to build, but now seemed like a good time to put it out there: even if the results aren’t nearly the quality I’d like, I’ve still found it useful and I want to show it off! I’ve been working on it since September 2021, but only in fits and starts. The entire thing runs on a computer in my living room (there’s a picture on the About page); I haven’t done any load testing so we’ll see how it holds up.
2022 · search.feep.dev · its alternatives →
- 6AS
2020 · kuurio.com · its alternatives →
- 7AS
Hey all, Last time when we were on HackerNews [1], we received a lot of feedback, and we incorporated most of it. - We have changed our name from grep.help to usegrasp.com - A privacy policy page - Bulk import - Pricing page We are happy to introduce a new feature: a personalized answer search engine that provides direct citations to the content on the page. Demo: https://usegrasp.com/search?q=is+starship+fully+reusable%3F 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35510949
2023 · usegrasp.com · its alternatives →
- 8IB
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 →
- 9
Hi HN, I am Jiayuan, and I'm here to introduce a tool we've been building over the past few months: Devv (https://devv.ai). In simple terms, it is an AI-powered search engine specifically designed for developers. Now, you might ask, with so many AI search engines already available—Perplexity, You.com, Phind, and several open-source projects—why do we need another one? We all know that Generative Search Engines are built on RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)[1] combined with Large Language Models (LLMs). Most of the products mentioned above use indexes from general search engines…
2024 · devv.ai · its alternatives →
- 10
- 11
Support decentralized search by becoming a node operator.
2021 · t.me · its alternatives →
- 12
Dweb Search▲79A decentralized search engine for IPFS and Filecoin
2021 · dweb-search.on.fleek.co · its alternatives →
- 13PD
2021 · presearch.org · its alternatives →
- 14
Apollo▲76Unix-style personal search engine for your digital footprint
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Allsearch is a tool I made after getting fed up with Google's search results and reading up on conversations on HN about the state of search on the internet. This is a tool I made as a spiritual successor to GnodSearch (https://www.gnod.com/search/), which I've seen in a couple conversations about search on HN. GnodSearch is great, but a bit barebones in terms of looks and functionality; Allsearch is my attempt to build off of it. Similar to Gnod, Allsearch allows you to apply any given search query to a search engine of your choice (either through only keystrokes, or via…
2022 · allsear.ch · its alternatives →
- 17WD
2023 · svmetasearch.eu.org · its alternatives →
- 18
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 →
- 19MT
I made this classic looking text only search engine(sorry if that's overexaggerating) where you can get concise and straightforward results with sources. There are 5 prefixes right now. It is a prototype kinda thing right now. I am busy for my upcoming exams. So, I would appreciate if anyone is interested to contribute. I am currently using Gemini for this project. If anyone can implement better api's and improve code and the features it would be great help. It's generating fake source links right now, the search is slow, prefixes like weather and time needs to be fixed using api's related…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
- 21
Extend the browser's built-in search functionality.
2023 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
- 22
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 →
- 23AC
2021 · altsear.ch · its alternatives →
- 24YT
2012 · yourtrove.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- MiniSearch, a minimalist search engine with integrated browser-based AI alternatives
- MiniSearch, a client-side full-text search engine alternatives
- Self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting alternative to Google search alternatives
- SimpleSearch – Just a list of search bars alternatives
- Feep! search, an independent search engine for programmers alternatives
- A Simple Search Engine alternatives
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 →