Yacy

Peer based, decentralized search engine server.

Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Still maintained? Yes: 33 commits in the last 90 days.

Also an alternative to Google Search.

Docker #11 of 16 in Search Engines

At a glance

Yacy quick facts

Health score: 69/100 SLOWING
Stars: 4,090
Last commit: 1 month ago (Sep 2026)
Latest release: No tagged release
Licence: GPL-2.0

View yacy/yacy_search_server on GitHub ↗ Website ↗

Top alternatives to Yacy

Full rankings: Google Search alternatives

In its own words

The project's README opens: "YaCy is a full search engine application containing a server hosting a search index, a web application to provide a nice user front-end for searches and index creation and a production-ready web crawler with a scheduler to keep a search index fresh."

Why it ranks here

Health score explained

Yacy scores 69/100, #11 of 16 in Search Engines: 33 commits in the last 90 days earn 35.0 of 35 points, the absence of a tagged release forfeits all 25 release points, 4,090 stars add 14.4 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and Docker support adds the final 10. That places it in the slowing band (40 to 69). The biggest shortfall is release recency, worth 25.0 more points.

Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.

Commit activity 35.0 / 35

33 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
Release recency biggest shortfall 0.0 / 25

No tagged release found
Stars 14.4 / 20

4.1k 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

33
Last 90 days: 208
Last 12 months: 1 month ago
Last push

Ranked #11 of 16 tools in Search Engines by health , between SearXNG (#10) and Apache Solr (#12) .

Details

Licence	GPL-2.0
Platforms	Java, Docker, K8S
Latest release	No tagged release
Stars	4,090
Open issues	215
Docker	Yes
Repository	yacy/yacy_search_server ↗

Visit website ↗ Source code ↗

Yacy vs its top 5 alternatives

Active tools that share a comparison page or a category with Yacy (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
Typesense	97	27k	GPL-3.0	today
Fess	92	1.1k	Apache-2.0	2 days ago
SearXNG	73	39k	AGPL-3.0	today
Yacy (this tool)	69	4.1k	GPL-2.0	1 month ago

Yacy: common questions

What does Yacy replace?

Repoly lists Yacy as an open-source alternative to Google Search. Each comparison page ranks every alternative by the same health score, so you can see where Yacy stands against the others.

Is Yacy still maintained?

Yacy had 33 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 1 month ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.

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