Fess
Powerful and easily deployable Enterprise Search Server.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 477 commits in the last 90 days, latest release fess-15.9.0 (Oct 2026).
Also an alternative to Google Search.
At a glance
Fess quick facts
- Health score
- 92/100 GOOD
- Stars
- 1,142
- Last commit
- 2 days ago (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- fess-15.9.0, Oct 2026
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
Top alternatives to Fess
Full rankings: Google Search alternatives
In its own words
The project's README opens: "Fess is an enterprise search server that you can install and run on any platform with a Java runtime. It is built on OpenSearch, but prior OpenSearch knowledge is not required: Fess is configured through a browser-based administration UI."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
Fess scores 92/100, #6 of 16 in Search Engines: 477 commits in the last 90 days earn 35.0 of 35 points, the latest release (fess-15.9.0, 15 days ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 1,142 stars add 12.2 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and Docker support adds the final 10. That places it in the good band (70 and above). The biggest shortfall is star count, worth 7.8 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
Health over time
- Commit activity 35.0 / 35
477 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
fess-15.9.0 released 15 days ago
- Stars biggest shortfall 12.2 / 20
1.1k stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 10.0 / 10
Docker image or Compose file available
Commit activity
- 477
- Last 90 days
- 756
- Last 12 months
- 2 days ago
- Last push
Ranked #6 of 16 tools in Search Engines by health , between Hister (#5) and Meme Search (#7) .
Details
| Licence | Apache-2.0 |
| Platforms | Java, Docker |
| Latest release | fess-15.9.0 · 15 days ago |
| Stars | 1,142 |
| Open issues | 15 |
| Docker | Yes |
| Repository | codelibs/fess ↗ |
Fess vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a comparison page or a category with Fess (Search Engines), scored on the same five terms.
| Tool | Health | Stars | Licence | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MeiliSearch | 99 | 60k | MIT | yesterday |
| OpenSearch | 97 | 14k | Apache-2.0 | today |
| Fess (this tool) | 92 | 1.1k | Apache-2.0 | 2 days ago |
| SearXNG | 73 | 39k | AGPL-3.0 | today |
| Yacy | 69 | 4.1k | GPL-2.0 | 1 month ago |
| Apache Solr | 68 | 1.7k | Apache-2.0 | today |
Fess: common questions
What does Fess replace?
Repoly lists Fess as an open-source alternative to Google Search. Each comparison page ranks every alternative by the same health score, so you can see where Fess stands against the others.
Is Fess still maintained?
Fess had 477 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 2 days ago; the latest tagged release, fess-15.9.0, is from 15 days ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.
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