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Whoogle Search

Whoogle is a self-hosted Google search frontend that stripped ads, JavaScript, AMP links, cookies, and IP tracking from results.

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Whoogle is a self-hosted Google search frontend that stripped ads, JavaScript, AMP links, cookies, and IP tracking from results. Google has since blocked the non-JavaScript query methods it relied on, and the project no longer returns search results.

Platform availability

Available on 3 of 9 platforms

  • Unraid
  • TrueNAS
  • Umbrel
  • ZimaOS (not listed)
  • Proxmox (not listed)
  • Helm (not listed)
  • Mac (not listed)
  • Windows (not listed)
  • Linux (not listed)

Health score?A 0-100 score computed nightly from four factors: maintained (40%: recent commits and steady activity), popular (25%: GitHub stars, log scale), easy to install (20%: platforms, install notes, setup guides, Docker image) and light to run (15%: minimum RAM, ARM support). When the source code has been checked, a fifth factor, security check (20%: automated scan for committed secrets, unsafe desktop-app settings, known-vulnerable dependencies and project hygiene; any serious finding caps it at 20), is added. Factors without data are left out and the rest are rescaled.

69/100 Good

Maintained
No data
Popular
No data
Easy to install
452 install platforms, install notes, Docker image
Light to run
100128 MB minimum RAM, runs on ARM

Based on 2 of 4 factors.

Availability: platform listings confirmed today, links checked 14 days ago

No GitHub repository data collected yet.

Resources & Compatibility

Minimum requirements: 128 MB RAM. ARM (e.g. Raspberry Pi) is supported.

Checked 15 days ago - source: Docker Hub image tags and published docs

First-install notes

  • Expose port 5000 so you can open Whoogle When running the Docker example, use the publish flag to expose port 5000 (the example uses 5000:5000). That tells your computer to forward browser requests to Whoogle; without it, you cannot open Whoogle in a browser. source
  • Run the container in the background Add --detach to docker run so Whoogle runs in the background and stays up after you close your terminal. If you do not, the app may stop when your terminal session ends. source
  • Help searches with a tested user-agent list A user-agent is the short label a program sends to Google to say what kind of browser it is; Whoogle can use a file of tested working labels set with WHOOGLE_UA_LIST_FILE. This can prevent Google from rejecting requests, which would otherwise cause empty or failing searches. source

Fetched 7 days ago - each note links to its source

Alternatives (12)

  • Brave Search - Brave Search MCP Server is an open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives AI agents and large language model (LLM) clients a…
  • DuckDuckGo - Privacy-focused search engine offering Zero-click Info, instant answers, and more, built from open-source software for a user-friendly expe…
  • Ecosia - Search engine donating over 80% of profits to global reforestation, supporting millions of trees planted, funded by ad revenue, with mobile…
  • Google Search - Dominant search engine offering personalized results, image, video, news search, and voice capabilities, used across multiple platforms.
  • Kagi Search - Subscription-based search engine focusing on privacy, ad-free experience, deep customization, unbiased results, user-controlled features, a…
  • Microsoft Bing - Web search engine with real-time suggestions, related results via semantic technology, image search, Explorer pane, and history sharing thr…
  • Mojeek - Privacy-focused search engine delivering independent, unbiased web and image results from its own index without tracking or profiling, host…
  • Openverse - Openverse is a tool that allows openly licensed and public domain works to be discovered and used by everyone.
  • Qwant - Privacy-first European search engine offering multi-platform web and image search, no tracking, no personalized results, and supports 13 la…
  • SearXNG - SearXNG is a privacy-respecting, self-hosted metasearch engine and maintained fork of searx that aggregates results from many search servic…
  • Startpage - Privacy-focused search engine using Google results without trackers, storing no personal data, and offering Anonymous View for private brow…
  • YaCy - YaCy is a decentralized, peer-to-peer search engine that maintains its own web index across participating nodes.

Checked yesterday - source: AlternativeTo

Common questions

Why might someone question Whoogle's status as a recommended search engine?

The Privacy Guides thread only asks for clarification on why Whoogle Search is not recommended as a search engine, so the provided source does not explain the reason.

Can Whoogle still be used without Leta?

The provided source does not confirm this; it only discusses whether Whoogle can still be saved without Leta, while noting that it aggregates search results and strips trackers and ads.

What self-hosting benefit did one user note when running Whoogle on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W?

The blog post describes the process, some of the problems encountered, and why the author self-hosted Whoogle locally for themselves and their kids. It notes the unexpected benefit of hosting different services on their own small or old dedicated devices.

Why is self-hosting Whoogle harder to throttle than using a centralized instance?

Since Whoogle is entirely self-hosted on the user's preferred infrastructure rather than relying on a single or set of centralized instances, it is harder to throttle connection speeds by targeting a specific server IP or range of addresses.

Answers sourced from discuss.privacyguides.net, forum.gnoppix.org, www.reddit.com, www.redditmedia.com

Community

Collected 9 days ago - public community threads