--- title: "Deploy Vane — Self-Hosted AI Search, Formerly Perplexica" description: "Self-host Vane (ex-Perplexica): AI web search with cited answers." category: "AI/ML" url: https://railway.com/deploy/vane-ai-search --- # Deploy Vane — Self-Hosted AI Search, Formerly Perplexica Self-host Vane (ex-Perplexica): AI web search with cited answers. **[Deploy Vane — Self-Hosted AI Search, Formerly Perplexica on Railway](https://railway.com/template/vane-ai-search)** Machine-readable deploy manifest (JSON, validated by TemplateCI): https://railway.com/deploy/vane-ai-search/manifest.json - **Creator:** SilverBanana - **Category:** AI/ML - **Total deploys:** 3 ## Template content ### Vane https://www.vane.capital/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Vane_Logo_1.svg - **Image:** itzcrazykns1337/vane:latest ### Bifrost https://framerusercontent.com/images/k49dViw06yckDjJt5uERdfTSjU.png - **Image:** maximhq/bifrost:latest ### Postgres https://devicons.railway.app/i/postgresql.svg - **Image:** ghcr.io/railwayapp-templates/postgres-ssl:18 ## Documentation # Deploy and Host Vane on Railway Vane — **formerly Perplexica**, renamed in March 2026 — is the most popular open-source self-hosted alternative to Perplexity AI, with **20k+ GitHub stars**. Ask a question and it searches the live web through its own bundled private SearXNG, reranks the results, and streams a cited answer with source images and videos. Connect Claude, GPT-4o, Gemini, Groq, Ollama, or LM Studio — you control the model, the search index, and the data. One Docker image. No telemetry. No rate limits. No $20/month Perplexity Pro subscription. Self-host on Railway for ~$10/month flat with persistent chat history and provider config. --- ## What This Template Deploys | Service | Purpose | |---|---| | **Vane (single container)** | The complete stack — Next.js frontend, answer engine, and a private bundled SearXNG metasearch engine, served on port `3000` | | **Persistent Volume (4 GB)** | Mounted at `/home/vane/data` — chat history, uploaded files, and provider configuration survive every redeploy | SearXNG runs inside the same container on internal `localhost:8080` — nothing extra to wire up. No PostgreSQL, no Redis, no gateway service. Bring one LLM API key and start searching. --- ## About Hosting Vane Perplexity Pro costs $20/month, logs every query, and locks you to their models. Vane gives you the same experience — live web search, cited answers, focus modes — on your own infrastructure with full query privacy. Since the March 2026 rename from Perplexica, the project has kept shipping: a redesigned setup wizard, deep research mode, file uploads, domain-limited search, and a custom streaming engine that replaced LangChain entirely. Railway runs the bundled image with automatic HTTPS and a persistent volume. The image ships Playwright and Chromium for headless page rendering, so allocate **at least 4 GB RAM** to avoid out-of-memory failures during cold starts — this template pre-configures that. Typical cost: **~$10/month** on Railway's Hobby plan. Perplexity Pro is $20/month per user. Groq and Gemini both offer generous free API tiers, so your per-query model cost can be zero. --- ## Deploy in Under 5 Minutes 1. Click **Deploy on Railway** — the Vane container builds automatically (~3–4 minutes; the image is large because it bundles SearXNG and Chromium) 2. Open your Railway-assigned URL — the Setup Wizard loads on first visit 3. Pick a provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq, Ollama, or LM Studio) and paste your key 4. Choose a chat model and an embedding model, confirm, and ask your first question 5. Settings persist to the volume — redeploys never repeat the wizard No SearXNG wiring. No config files. No database setup. --- ## Common Use Cases - **Self-hosted alternative to Perplexity AI** — live web search with cited answers at ~$10/month flat instead of $20/month per user, with zero query logging - **Perplexica users migrating to the new Vane image** — same project, new name since March 2026; this template runs the current `vane:latest` image with the bundled SearXNG - **Private research over the live web** — queries route through your own SearXNG instance; no search history sold, no profile built, no telemetry leaving the container - **Academic and focused research** — focus modes constrain search to academic papers, YouTube, Reddit, Wolfram Alpha, or specific domains you name - **Ask questions about your own documents** — upload PDFs, text files, and images alongside web search; Vane answers from both - **Team search on a shared instance** — one deployment, one model bill, search history saved locally for the whole team --- ## Configuration | Variable | Required | Description | |---|---|---| | — | — | No environment variables required — all provider setup happens in the browser Setup Wizard | | `SEARXNG_API_URL` | Optional | Only for the `slim` image variant if you run SearXNG separately — the default image bundles it | | `PORT` | Auto-set | Railway injects the port; Vane serves on `3000` | > All configuration — API keys, chat model, embedding model — is entered in the Setup Wizard > and persisted to `/home/vane/data/config.json` on the volume. Keys never live in environment > variables or version control. --- ## Vane vs. AI Search Alternatives | | Vane (Railway) | Perplexity Pro | Morphic | Open WebUI + search | |---|---|---|---|---| | **Monthly cost** | ~$10 flat | $20/user | Hosted/paid | ~$5 (self-hosted) | | **Query privacy** | ✅ Your SearXNG | ❌ Logged | ❌ Cloud | ✅ Configurable | | **Model choice** | ✅ Any provider + Ollama | ❌ Their models | ⚠️ Limited | ✅ Any | | **Cited answers** | ✅ Inline + sources | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Basic | | **Focus modes** | ✅ Academic, YouTube, Reddit, Wolfram | ✅ Some | ❌ No | ❌ No | | **File uploads** | ✅ PDF, text, images | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ✅ Yes | | **Search bundled in image** | ✅ SearXNG built in | N/A | N/A | ❌ Separate setup | | **Open source** | ✅ MIT | ❌ No | ✅ Partial | ✅ Yes | --- ## Dependencies for Vane Hosting - Railway account — Hobby plan; allocate 4 GB RAM (~$10/month typical usage) - One LLM API key — Groq and Gemini free tiers work; Ollama for fully local inference - Nothing else — SearXNG and storage are bundled ### Deployment Dependencies - [Vane GitHub Repository](https://github.com/ItzCrazyKns/Vane) — source, formerly Perplexica - [Vane Docker Image](https://hub.docker.com/r/itzcrazykns1337/vane) — bundled image - [Groq Console](https://console.groq.com) — free-tier API keys - [Railway Volumes Documentation](https://docs.railway.com/volumes) — persistent storage ### Implementation Details This template deploys `itzcrazykns1337/vane:latest` — the post-rename image that bundles the Next.js app, the answer engine, and a private SearXNG configured with JSON output and the Wolfram Alpha engine enabled. A 4 GB volume at `/home/vane/data` persists chat history, uploads, and `config.json`. The image is ~3.6 GB because it ships Playwright and Chromium for headless web rendering — this powers deep research mode and page scraping. The template allocates 4 GB RAM to prevent OOM during cold starts. Vane's v1.12 line removed LangChain for a custom streaming and function-calling implementation, so provider behaviour is handled natively per connection. --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **Is Vane the same as Perplexica?** Yes. Perplexica was renamed to Vane in March 2026 — same maintainer, same codebase, continued development. The Docker image moved from `itzcrazykns1337/perplexica` to `itzcrazykns1337/vane` and internal paths changed from `/home/perplexica` to `/home/vane`. The old GitHub URL redirects to the Vane repository. **Do I need an OpenAI API key?** No — any one provider works: Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Groq, OpenAI, Ollama, or LM Studio. Groq and Gemini both have generous free tiers, so you can run Vane with zero per-query model cost. For fully local inference, point the wizard at a remote Ollama endpoint. **Why does this template need 4 GB RAM?** The bundled image ships Playwright and Chromium for headless page rendering, which Vane's deep research and scraping features use. Under 4 GB, cold starts can hit out-of-memory failures. This template pre-allocates the right resources so deploys succeed on the first try. **Is my search history private?** Yes. Queries go through the bundled private SearXNG, answers are generated by the model you chose, and history is stored on your Railway volume. No telemetry leaves the container. Note that upstream search engines still receive anonymised queries from SearXNG, and your LLM provider sees the prompts you send it. **Do I lose chat history and settings on redeploy?** No. History, uploads, and provider configuration persist to `/home/vane/data` on the volume. Redeploys and version updates skip the Setup Wizard and keep everything. **How do I update Vane?** Trigger a redeploy to pull `vane:latest`, or pin a specific tag in the service settings. Your volume data is unaffected. Watch the Vane GitHub releases for breaking changes — the project ships actively. --- ## Why Deploy and Host Vane 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 Vane on Railway, you get the most popular open-source Perplexity alternative — live web search, cited answers, focus modes, and file uploads — in one container with bundled private search, at ~$10/month flat with no query logging and no per-user subscription. ## Similar templates - [Chat Chat](https://railway.com/deploy/-WWW5r) — Chat Chat, your own unified chat and search to AI platform. - [stella](https://railway.com/deploy/stella) — Self-host stella with web, API, Postgres, Redis, and object storage. - [Hermes Agent | OpenClaw Alternative with Dashboard](https://railway.com/deploy/hermes-agent-or-openclaw-alternative-wit) — Self-Hosted Hermes AI Agent for Telegram, Discord & Slack Open this page in a browser: https://railway.com/deploy/vane-ai-search