What is LibreY?

LibreY is a privacy-focused meta search engine that pulls results from several providers: Google, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Ecosia, Yandex, and Mojeek for web search; Qwant for images; and Ahmia plus other torrent sites. It runs completely without JavaScript, keeps zero user data, and exposes an API. The codebase originated as a fork of LibreX, adding extra scrapers and swapping automatic redirection for instance fallback. Deployment options include Docker Compose, plain Docker, or a manual PHP/NGINX setup on Linux.

Should you self-host LibreY?

LibreY scores 46/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #31 of 41 in Search Engines. It has 324 GitHub stars.

There was no stable release in the past 12 months, so check the repository's recent activity before you rely on it.

Setup is moderate: expect some configuration beyond a single command. An official Docker image is available. It is AGPL-3.0-licensed and written mostly in PHP.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is SearXNG (86/100, 38 946 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See LibreY vs SearXNG side by side.

Features

Image Search
Instance fallback
Meta Search
No JavaScript required
OpenSearch support
Privacy-focused
REST API
Tor/I2P support
Torrent Search
Video search via Invidious

How to install LibreY

Install LibreY with Docker

Docker

Environment variables

TZ, CONFIG_GOOGLE_DOMAIN, CONFIG_LANGUAGE, CONFIG_NUMBER_OF_RESULTS, CONFIG_INVIDIOUS_INSTANCE, CONFIG_DISABLE_BITTORRENT_SEARCH, CONFIG_HIDDEN_SERVICE_SEARCH, CONFIG_INSTANCE_FALLBACK, CONFIG_RATE_LIMIT_COOLDOWN, CONFIG_CACHE_TIME, CONFIG_DISABLE_API, CONFIG_TEXT_SEARCH_ENGINE, CURLOPT_PROXY_ENABLED, CURLOPT_PROXY, CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION

docker run -d --name librey --ip=172.4.0.6 --network librey_tor_net -p 8080:8080 -e TZ="America/New_York" -e CONFIG_GOOGLE_DOMAIN="com" -e CONFIG_LANGUAGE="en" -e CONFIG_NUMBER_OF_RESULTS="10" -e CONFIG_INVIDIOUS_INSTANCE="https://inv.nadeko.net" -e CONFIG_DISABLE_BITTORRENT_SEARCH=false -e CONFIG_HIDDEN_SERVICE_SEARCH=false -e CONFIG_INSTANCE_FALLBACK=true -e CONFIG_RATE_LIMIT_COOLDOWN=25 -e CONFIG_CACHE_TIME=20 -e CONFIG_DISABLE_API=false -e CONFIG_TEXT_SEARCH_ENGINE="auto" -e CURLOPT_PROXY_ENABLED=true -e CURLOPT_PROXY="172.4.0.5:9050" -e CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE="CURLPROXY_SOCKS5_HOSTNAME" -e CURLOPT_USERAGENT="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:125.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/125.0" -e CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION=true -v ./nginx_logs:/var/log/nginx -v ./php_logs:/var/log/php84 --restart unless-stopped ghcr.io/ahwxorg/librey:latest

Example with Tor proxy; can run without Tor by adjusting proxy settings

Install LibreY with Docker Compose

Docker and Docker Compose

Environment variables

CONFIG_GOOGLE_DOMAIN, CONFIG_LANGUAGE, CONFIG_NUMBER_OF_RESULTS, CONFIG_INVIDIOUS_INSTANCE, CONFIG_DISABLE_BITTORRENT_SEARCH, CONFIG_HIDDEN_SERVICE_SEARCH, CONFIG_INSTANCE_FALLBACK, CONFIG_RATE_LIMIT_COOLDOWN, CONFIG_CACHE_TIME, CONFIG_DISABLE_API, CONFIG_TEXT_SEARCH_ENGINE, CURLOPT_PROXY_ENABLED, CURLOPT_PROXY, CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION

services: librey: image: ghcr.io/ahwxorg/librey:latest container_name: librey network_mode: bridge ports: - 8080:8080 environment: - CONFIG_GOOGLE_DOMAIN=com - CONFIG_LANGUAGE=en - CONFIG_NUMBER_OF_RESULTS=10 - CONFIG_INVIDIOUS_INSTANCE=https://inv.nadeko.net - CONFIG_DISABLE_BITTORRENT_SEARCH=false - CONFIG_HIDDEN_SERVICE_SEARCH=false - CONFIG_INSTANCE_FALLBACK=true - CONFIG_RATE_LIMIT_COOLDOWN=25 - CONFIG_CACHE_TIME=20 - CONFIG_DISABLE_API=false - CONFIG_TEXT_SEARCH_ENGINE=auto - CURLOPT_PROXY_ENABLED=false - CURLOPT_PROXY=192.0.2.53:8388 - CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE=CURLPROXY_HTTP - CURLOPT_USERAGENT=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:125.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/125.0 - CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION=true volumes: # - ./nginx_logs:/var/log/nginx # Disabled by default. These are the NGINX request logs. - ./php_logs:/var/log/php84 # Enabled by default. These are the PHP error logs. restart: unless-stopped watchtower: # Watchtower is not required but highly recommended, since Watchtower will re-pull and restart the LibreY container automatically whenever there's an update. image: containrrr/watchtower volumes: - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

Includes optional Watchtower for automatic updates

Install LibreY with Build from Source

PHP, PHP-FPM, PHP extensions (dom, curl, apcu), NGINX, Git

apt install php php-fpm php-dom php-curl php-apcu nginx git

mkdir -p /var/www/html git clone https://github.com/Ahwxorg/LibreY.git /var/www/html/LibreY

cd /var/www/html/LibreY/ mv config.php.example config.php mv opensearch.xml.example opensearch.xml

sed -i 's/http://localhost:80/https://your.domain/g' opensearch.xml

Add nginx configuration

server { listen 80;

    server_name your.domain;

    root /var/www/html/LibreY;
    index index.php;

    location ~ \.php$ {
           include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
           fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php-fpm.sock;
    }

}

systemctl enable --now php-fpm nginx

Instructions for Debian GNU/Linux; similar on other *nix variants