How do I deploy Web Search MCP (Open Source Alternative To Firecraw, Linkup, Tavily, Exa or Bright Data) on Railway?

You can deploy Web Search MCP (Open Source Alternative To Firecraw, Linkup, Tavily, Exa or Bright Data) on Railway by clicking the "Deploy Now" button on this page. Railway will automatically set up all the necessary services and configurations for you.

What are the system requirements?

Railway handles all the infrastructure requirements. You only need a web browser to deploy and manage your application.

Is this template free to use?

Yes, this template is free to use within your existing Railway account.

Can I customize this template?

Yes, you can fully customize this template. After deployment, you will have full control of what you've deployed in your Railway project.

How do I get support for this template?

You can get support through our community forum: web-search-mcp-open-source-alternative-171986a4, or click "Get template help" for this template for more assistance.

Deploy and Host Web Search MCP on Railway

Web Search MCP is an open-source MCP server that gives AI agents eight tools to search, fetch, screenshot, crawl, and archive the web. It consumes zero LLM tokens for web access, so your models spend their budget on reasoning, not searching. The web has always been free for humans, so why should AI agents have to pay per query?

About Hosting Web Search MCP

This template deploys a complete self-hosted web toolkit as four services on Railway: Redis, SearXNG (privacy-respecting metasearch engine), Crawl4AI (headless browser for content extraction, screenshots, PDFs, and JS execution), and the MCP Server that ties them together. An API key is auto-generated at deploy time to secure your endpoint. Once deployed, any MCP-compatible client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.) can connect over HTTP and use all eight tools. No per-query fees, no third-party API keys, no usage limits. You own the infrastructure and the data never leaves your stack.

Common Use Cases

Replace paid search APIs: Drop-in replacement for Firecrawl, Linkup, Tavily, Exa, or Bright Data. Get web search, page fetching, and content extraction without per-query costs
Supercharge AI coding agents: Connect Claude Code or Cursor to self-hosted web search and page fetching. Replace their built-in WebSearch and WebFetch tools so every search is private and free
Web research and monitoring: Search the web, fetch pages as clean markdown, take screenshots, generate PDFs, execute JavaScript on pages, and query the Wayback Machine for historical snapshots

Dependencies for Web Search MCP Hosting

Redis (7-alpine): In-memory cache used by SearXNG for rate limiting and result caching
SearXNG: Privacy-respecting metasearch engine that aggregates results from Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, and more
Crawl4AI: Headless browser service for page fetching, content extraction, screenshots, PDFs, and JavaScript execution
MCP Server (Node.js 22): The MCP endpoint that exposes all eight tools and proxies requests to SearXNG, Crawl4AI, and the Wayback Machine

Deployment Dependencies

Implementation Details

The MCP Server exposes a Streamable HTTP endpoint at /mcp that any MCP client can connect to:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "web-search": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://your-server.up.railway.app/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

The eight tools available are: web-search, web-fetch, web-screenshot, web-pdf, web-execute-js, web-crawl, web-snapshots, and web-archive.

Why Deploy Web Search MCP 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 Web Search MCP 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.