Mcp Searxng Public

What is Mcp Searxng Public about?

Mcp Searxng Public offers an MCP server that aggregates search results from up to three public SearXNG instances. It fetches the HTML output of those instances, extracts the relevant URL and summary information, and returns a standardized JSON payload that can be consumed by Cursor or other MCP‑compatible clients.

How to use Mcp Searxng Public?

1. Install the package with npm:

   npm install mcp-searxng-public
   

2. Configure the server in the MCP client (e.g., Cursor) using the JSON snippet below. Adjust the SEARXNG_BASE_URL list to include the public instances you trust.
3. Invoke the search endpoint with the required query argument and optional time_range, language, and detailed flags.

Example client configuration:

{
  "SearXNGScraper": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["mcp-searxng-public"],
    "capabilities": { "tool-calls": true },
    "env": {
      "SEARXNG_BASE_URL": "https://metacat.online;https://nyc1.sx.ggtyler.dev;https://ooglester.com",
      "DEFAULT_LANGUAGE": "en"
    }
  }
}

Key features of Mcp Searxng Public

• HTML‑based scraping: Works with public SearXNG instances that only expose HTML, avoiding the need for the JSON API.
• Fallback mechanism: Uses a primary instance and up to two fallbacks to improve reliability.
• Multi‑page detailed search: When detailed=true, queries pages 1‑3 on each instance, merges results, and deduplicates them.
• Time‑range and language support: Passes SearXNG‑compatible time_range and language parameters.
• Simple MCP deployment: Run with a single npx command; no additional scripts required.

Use cases of Mcp Searxng Public

• Integrating privacy‑focused web search into AI assistants or chatbots.
• Enriching downstream pipelines with up‑to‑date search results without depending on proprietary APIs.
• Building search‑aware tools for research, knowledge‑base population, or content curation.
• Providing a consistent search interface across multiple public SearXNG instances for redundancy.

FAQ from the Mcp Searxng Public

Q: Why not use the SearXNG JSON API? A: Many public instances disable the JSON endpoint for security or configuration reasons. This server works purely with the displayed HTML, ensuring compatibility with virtually any public instance.

Q: How many instances can I list in SEARXNG_BASE_URL? A: You can include as many as you like; the server will try the first three that are reachable.

Q: What does the detailed flag do? A: It triggers a deeper crawl, pulling three pages of results from each selected instance, then merges and removes duplicate entries.

Q: Which languages are supported? A: Any language code recognized by SearXNG (e.g., en, es, fr). If DEFAULT_LANGUAGE is set, it is used when the caller does not provide a language argument.

Q: How are duplicates handled? A: Results are deduplicated based on the URL field after merging pages from all queried instances.

Q: Can I limit the number of returned results? A: The server currently returns all extracted items; you can post‑process the JSON array in your client to truncate as needed.

mcp-searxng-public

An MCP server that queries public SearXNG instances, parsing HTML contents into a JSON result

Rationale

All the MCP servers for SearXNG that I've seen use "json" as the output format. While that is certainly a faster way to code a SearXNG MCP server, it will make it fail on virtually all public servers since they don't expose the JSON format.

This server will read from up to three public SearXNG servers (using one as main and the others as fallback) and will parse the results into JSON.

Installation

Install via npm install mcp-searxng-public.

If the server is installed, the run configuration is (for Cursor or Cursor-compatible clients) as follows:

{
  "SearXNGScraper": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["mcp-searxng-public"],
    "capabilities": {
      "tool-calls": true
    },
    "env": {
      "SEARXNG_BASE_URL": "https://metacat.online;https://nyc1.sx.ggtyler.dev;https://ooglester.com;https://search.080609.xyz;https://search.canine.tools;https://search.catboy.house;https://search.citw.lgbt;https://search.einfachzocken.eu;https://search.federicociro.com;https://search.hbubli.cc;https://search.im-in.space;https://search.indst.eu",
      "DEFAULT_LANGUAGE": "en"
    }
  }
}

Note: You may need to adjust the env variables, particularly SEARXNG_BASE_URL, to point to your preferred SearXNG instances. The DEFAULT_LANGUAGE can also be set as needed. You can run the report task to get a report on good (accessible) SearXNG instances which you can put in the URLs line.

Usage

The server exposes one endpoint: search. The endpoint takes four arguments:

• query - the search query
• time_range (optional) - which takes a time range parameter according to the https://docs.searxng.org/dev/search_api.html spec (day, month or year).
• language (optional) - the language code for the search (e.g., en, es, fr). If not provided, it defaults to the value of the DEFAULT_LANGUAGE environment variable. If neither is set, no language parameter is sent to SearXNG.
• detailed (optional) - if set to "true", performs a more thorough search by querying up to 3 servers and fetching multiple pages of results (pages 1, 2, and 3) from each server, then merging and deduplicating the results.

Returned is an array of objects:

[
      {
        "url": "https://github.com/searxng/searxng",
        "summary": "You can start SearXNG using make run in the terminal or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B"
      },
      {
        "url": "https://searx.bndkt.io/",
        "summary": "Powered by searxng - 2025.3.22+5986629c6 — a privacy-respecting, open metasearch engine Source code | Issue tracker | Engine stats | Public instances | Contact instance maintainer"
      },
      {
        "url": "https://docs.searxng.org/"
        "summary": "SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from up to 243 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, SearXNG can be used over Tor …"
      }
      {
        "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SearXNG",
        "summary": "SearXNG is federated, and as such is hosted by several instances, public and private. Private instances are hosted on a local network, or run on the user's desktop computer itself, and are …"
      }
]