4get
A self-hostable proxy search engine that queries DuckDuckGo, Brave, Google, Yandex and more without tracking.
Open source alternative to:
4get is a free and open source metasearch engine written in PHP. It acts as a proxy between you and major search engines, so your IP address and fingerprint never reach the upstream providers. It aggregates results for web, images, videos, news, and music from sources including DuckDuckGo, Brave, Yandex, Google, Startpage, Mojeek, Marginalia, and many others.
The web interface needs no JavaScript to function, and it ships features most metasearch engines skip: rotating per-scraper proxies, optional bot protection, search filters, and a favicon fetcher with caching plus an image proxy. RAM usage is modest, roughly 100-400 MB per instance, and getting a working instance up does not require a sprawling configuration.
Compared with paid or ad-funded search, 4get gives you a clean, tracker-free view of search results you can use from a public instance or your own server. It is not an indexer itself: it relies on upstream engines, so if a source breaks it can be swapped or disabled in the config. The official public instance is at 4get.ca with a list of community instances at 4get.ca/instances, or you can self-host using the included Apache2 and Docker setup guides.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which search engines does 4get pull results from?
By default it proxies DuckDuckGo, Brave, Yandex, Google, and more. Web, image, video, news, music, and autocomplete can each be enabled per source in the configuration. Also supported are Yahoo! JAPAN, Startpage, Mojeek, Naver, Baidu, Marginalia, Yep, Mwmbl, and Google's API and Custom Search modes, among others.
Is there a public instance of 4get or do I need to self-host?
The official instance runs at 4get.ca, and the developers maintain a curated list of community instances at 4get.ca/instances. Beware of copycats: sites like 4get.ch and 4get.lol are not operated by the original developer.
How resource-hungry is a 4get instance?
According to the project's own comparison, an instance typically uses about 100 to 400 MB of RAM. The project recommends a Linux server with a typical LAMP-style setup, and installation guides exist for Apache2 and other web servers.
How does 4get keep search queries private?
4get acts as a proxy between you and upstream search engines, so the providers see the server's IP address instead of yours, and rotating proxies can be configured on a per-scraper basis. It also supports no-JavaScript browsing, an image proxy, and optional bot protection to stop other bots from scraping your instance.
Is 4get itself a search engine with its own index?
No, 4get is a metasearch engine. It fetches results from upstream providers rather than crawling its own index, which keeps resource usage low but means result quality depends on the sources you enable.
OpenAltFinder Score
Project Details
Compare 4get with
Similar open source alternatives
SearXNG
A free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services without tracking or profiling users.
Google Search
degoog
Open-source, self-hosted search engine aggregator with a comprehensive plugin system.
Google Search
Hister
Private, self-hosted search engine that indexes the pages you visit and the files you keep for full-text and semantic search.
Kagi