SearXNG Search Provider Setup and Configuration

OpenClaw supports SearXNG as a self-hosted, key-free web_search provider. SearXNG is an open source meta-search engine that pulls results from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other sources.

Advantages:

• Free and unlimited -- no API key or paid subscription needed
• Privacy / air-gap -- queries stay inside your network
• Works anywhere -- no regional restrictions on commercial search APIs

Setup

Install the plugin

openclaw plugins install @openclaw/searxng-plugin

Run a SearXNG instance

docker run -d -p 8888:8080 searxng/searxng

Or use any existing SearXNG deployment you have access to. Check the SearXNG documentation for production setup.

Configure

openclaw configure --section web
# Select "searxng" as the provider

Or set the environment variable and let auto-detection find it:

export SEARXNG_BASE_URL="http://localhost:8888"

Config

{
  tools: {
    web: {
      search: {
        provider: "searxng",
      },
    },
  },
}

Plugin-level settings for the SearXNG instance:

{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      searxng: {
        config: {
          webSearch: {
            baseUrl: "http://localhost:8888",
            categories: "general,news", // optional
            language: "en", // optional
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

baseUrl also accepts a SecretRef object (for example { source: "env", id: "SEARXNG_BASE_URL" }).

Environment variable

Set SEARXNG_BASE_URL as an alternative to config:

export SEARXNG_BASE_URL="http://localhost:8888"

Resolution order: configured baseUrl string, then an inline env SecretRef on baseUrl, then SEARXNG_BASE_URL. When none of the config paths are set and SEARXNG_BASE_URL is present with no explicit provider chosen, auto-detection picks SearXNG.

Plugin config reference

The web_search tool call also accepts count (1-10 results), categories, and language as per-call overrides.

Notes

• JSON API -- uses SearXNG's native format=json endpoint, not HTML scraping
• Image result URLs -- image-category results include img_src when SearXNG returns a direct image URL
• No API key -- works with any SearXNG instance out of the box
• Base URL validation -- baseUrl must be a valid http:// or https:// URL
• Network guard -- http:// base URLs must target a trusted private or loopback host (public hosts must use https://); https:// base URLs that resolve to a private or internal address get the same self-hosted allowance, while https:// base URLs that resolve publicly keep strict SSRF protection
• Auto-detection order -- SearXNG requires a configured baseUrl (order 200 among providers that already have their required credential). Key-free providers such as DuckDuckGo or Ollama Web Search never win auto-detection implicitly; they only activate on an explicit provider choice
• Self-hosted -- you control the instance, queries, and upstream search engines
• Categories default to general when not configured
• Category fallback -- if a non-general category request succeeds but returns zero results, OpenClaw retries the same query once with general before returning an empty result set
• Result caching -- identical queries (same query, count, categories, language, and base URL) are cached in-process for a short TTL
• Version requirement -- the plugin declares minHostVersion: >=2026.6.9

Tip

For SearXNG JSON API to work, make sure your SearXNG instance has the json format enabled in its settings.yml under search.formats.

Related

• Web Search overview -- all providers and auto-detection
• DuckDuckGo Search -- another key-free provider
• Brave Search -- structured results with free tier