Deploy and Host SearXNG on Railway

SearXNG is a free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine that aggregates results from hundreds of search engines and services without tracking or profiling users. It fetches results anonymously on your behalf, so your queries are never shared with upstream providers, and it ships with no ads, no logs, and full control over which engines are enabled.

About Hosting SearXNG

Hosting SearXNG on Railway is a single Docker service listening on port 8080. Settings persist in a volume mounted at /etc/searxng — the image auto-generates defaults on first boot, and this template overlays a minimal settings.yml that enables the JSON search format while inheriting all other built-in defaults. A random SEARXNG_SECRET is generated automatically per deployment via Railway's secret function. The built-in limiter/bot detection is disabled because container traffic inside the platform lacks reverse-proxy headers. Note: Railway supports one volume per service, so the cache directory uses the container filesystem.

Common Use Cases

• Private web search aggregation without tracking or ads
• JSON search API backend for tools like Open WebUI (/search?q=...&format=json)
• Reducing single-engine bias by merging results from many providers

Dependencies for SearXNG Hosting

• Persistent volume at /etc/searxng (settings)

Deployment Dependencies

• SearXNG on GitHub
• Official documentation
• Docker image: searxng/searxng

Implementation Details

Single service running the pinned ghcr.io/searxng/searxng:2026.7.22 image. SEARXNG_SECRET uses Railway's ${{secret(32)}} template function so every deployment gets a fresh secret. SEARXNG_LIMITER=false disables bot detection (no reverse-proxy headers inside the platform). Railway domain targets container port 8080.

Why Deploy SearXNG on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying SearXNG on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.