Description

n8n-nodes-searxng-search

This is an n8n community node for SearXNG Search. It allows you to perform web searches using SearXNG instances in your n8n workflows.

SearXNG is a privacy-respecting, self-hosted metasearch engine that aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled.

n8n is a fair-code licensed workflow automation platform.

Prerequisites

• A running SearXNG instance with API access

Installation

Follow the installation guide in the n8n community nodes documentation.

pnpm i n8n-nodes-searxng-search

Operations

Search

The node supports performing web searches with the following features:

• Query: Enter your search terms
• Categories: Choose from preset search categories (General, Images, News, Videos, Files, IT, Maps, Music, Science, Social Media) and optionally add Custom Categories as comma-separated values for instance-specific categories.

Additional Options

• Language: Filter results by any API-valid language value (for example en, en-US, pt-BR, all, or instance-specific locale codes)
• Time Range: Filter results by time (Day, Week, Month, Year, or Any Time)
• Safe Search: Set safety level (Off, Moderate, or Strict)
• Page Number: Specify which page of results to retrieve
• Format: Choose output format (JSON, CSV, HTML, or RSS)
• Engines: Comma-separated list of engines to use (for example: google,duckduckgo)
• Enabled Plugins: Comma-separated list of plugins to enable
• Disabled Plugins: Comma-separated list of plugins to disable
• Theme: Theme name to use for rendering (for example: simple)
• Image Proxy: Proxy image URLs through the SearXNG instance
• Autocomplete: Autocomplete backend to use (for example: duckduckgo)
• Input normalization: Comma-separated fields are trimmed and re-joined with commas before being sent to SearXNG, and empty values are ignored.

Credentials

To use this node, you need to configure credentials for your SearXNG instance:

1. API URL: The URL of your SearXNG instance (e.g., http://searxng:8080)
2. API Key: Your SearXNG API key (if required by your instance)

Example Usage

1. Add the SearXNG Search node to your workflow
2. Configure your SearXNG API credentials
3. Set up your search parameters:

   {
     "query": "your search terms",
     "categories": ["general"],
     "customCategories": "my-custom-category",
     "additionalFields": {
       "language": "en-US",
       "time_range": "month",
       "safesearch": "1",
       "engines": "google,duckduckgo",
       "enabledplugins": "Hashplugin",
       "disabledplugins": "TrackerURL_remover",
       "theme": "simple",
       "image_proxy": true,
       "autocomplete": "duckduckgo",
       "format": "json"
     }
   }
   

Response behavior by format

• JSON format:

– Returns parsed results plus metadata and raw payload.
– Return Single Response only applies to JSON responses with available parsed results.

• Non-JSON formats (CSV/HTML/RSS):

– Returns the payload as rawResponse without assuming results are present.
– Includes metadata.format so downstream nodes can branch on response format.

#### Non-JSON example response

{
  "success": true,
  "query": "privacy search",
  "metadata": {
    "format": "csv"
  },
  "rawResponse": "title,url,contentn..."
}

Compatibility

• Requires Node.js version 18.10 or later but 22.x is recommended

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

Please make sure to update tests as appropriate.

License

Apache 2.0

Support

• Create an issue
• Review the n8n community nodes documentation

Author

msoukhomlinov

Resources

• n8n community nodes documentation
• SearXNG Documentation
• SearXNG API Documentation