What is Mwmbl used for?

Mwmbl is a non-profit, open-source web search engine with no ads or tracking, where a volunteer community crawls the web and shapes the rankings. It is a good fit for private web search without advertising and contributing crawling capacity to an independent index.

Is Mwmbl open source?

Yes. Mwmbl is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at mwmbl/mwmbl and is written mainly in Python.

Yes. Mwmbl is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Mwmbl?

Yes. Mwmbl can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Mwmbl an alternative to?

Mwmbl is an open-source alternative to DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Mojeek and Google Search. Other open-source alternatives to DuckDuckGo include YaCy, SearXNG and SearX.

Is Mwmbl actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Mwmbl was on 2 October 2026. The project has 1.9k stars on GitHub.

Mwmbl: open-source alternative to DuckDuckGo, Brave Search

About Mwmbl

Mwmbl is a non-profit, open-source search engine that aims to replace commercial engines such as Google and Bing with a community-run alternative. It promises no ads, no tracking, and no profit, and it lets the community determine rankings. The code is written in Python and released under the AGPL-3.0 license.

The index is centralized, but the crawling is distributed across servers run by volunteers, who also help curate search results. The README is candid that the index is currently much smaller than those of commercial search engines and invites people to help it grow by contributing crawling capacity.

The main community gathers on Matrix, with a Discord server for non-development discussion. Mwmbl suits privacy-minded users and developers who want to experiment with independent search, and who are willing to accept more limited coverage in exchange for a transparent, non-commercial project.

Key features

No ads or tracking
Community-determined rankings
Distributed crawling by volunteers
Open-source search index
Non-profit governance
Matrix and Discord communities

Good fit for

→Private web search without advertising
→Contributing crawling capacity to an independent index

Built with: Python
Tags: search-engine; non-profit; privacy; web-crawler; open-source; community; python; independent

Mwmbl: questions and answers

What is Mwmbl used for?: Mwmbl is a non-profit, open-source web search engine with no ads or tracking, where a volunteer community crawls the web and shapes the rankings. It is a good fit for private web search without advertising and contributing crawling capacity to an independent index.
Is Mwmbl open source?: Yes. Mwmbl is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at mwmbl/mwmbl and is written mainly in Python.
Is Mwmbl free?: Yes. Mwmbl is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Mwmbl?: Yes. Mwmbl can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Mwmbl an alternative to?: Mwmbl is an open-source alternative to DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Mojeek and Google Search. Other open-source alternatives to DuckDuckGo include YaCy, SearXNG and SearX.
Is Mwmbl actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Mwmbl was on 2 October 2026. The project has 1.9k stars on GitHub.