Self-host Antfly
v0.2.5Open-source search-and-inference database with built-in ML
- Stars
- 476
- Ports
- 8080 (Public API), 4200 (Metrics/health), 9090 (MCP (commented out by default))
ghcr.io/antflydb/antflyWhat is Antfly?
Antfly is a Zig-based search-and-inference database that combines full-text, vector, and graph search in a single engine. It runs machine learning models locally to handle chunking, embedding, reranking, transcription, OCR, and entity extraction automatically when data is written. The engine can operate as a single .aflite file, a standalone node with hot standby, a multi-Raft cluster, or serverless over S3-compatible object storage. The Antfarm web dashboard includes interactive playgrounds for search, retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge graphs, and model testing. Authentication is handled via API keys, basic auth, and bearer tokens. Supported external model providers include Ollama, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Cohere, AWS Bedrock, Google Gemini, and Vertex AI. PostgreSQL change data capture replication mirrors tables into Antfly. Available installation methods: Docker, Docker Compose, Kubernetes, Homebrew, or direct binary download.
Should you self-host Antfly?
Antfly scores 50/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #27 of 41 in Search Engines. It has 476 GitHub stars.
It shipped 1 stable release in the past year. The latest, v0.2.5, came out on 28 September 2026.
Setup is moderate: expect some configuration beyond a single command. An official Docker image is available. It is Apache-2.0-licensed and written mostly in Zig.
Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is SearXNG (86/100, 38 940 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See Antfly vs SearXNG side by side.
Features
- ACID Transactions
- Aggregations
- Built-in RAG agents
- CLI for server, tables, queries, backups, auth, model registry
- Distributed multi-Raft cluster
- Document TTL
- Full-text search with highlighting
- Graph indexes and traversal
- Hybrid search (BM25 + dense + sparse vectors)
- Multi-backend inference (CPU, Metal, CUDA)
- Multimodal search (images, audio, video)
- Object storage backend (serverless)In progress
- PostgreSQL CDC replication
- Reranking (cross-encoder and late-interaction)
- Secrets Management
Antfly README
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