SearXNG on Google Cloud Run

SearXNG is a privacy-respecting, self-hosted metasearch engine that aggregates results from 70+ search services without tracking users or serving ads. This module deploys SearXNG on Cloud Run v2 on top of the App_CloudRun foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud infrastructure.

This guide focuses on the cloud services SearXNG uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics common to every Cloud Run application — service identity, ingress and load balancing, scaling and concurrency, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_CloudRun foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

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What SearXNG costs on RAD, and how that compares

Running SearXNG in your own GCP project costs about $16.78/month in Google Cloud charges; RAD's module fee is a one-time 40 credits (or 36 credits in a RAD-managed project), covering setup and support -- not the ongoing cloud bill, which Google bills you directly in your own project or RAD meters hourly in credits in a RAD-managed one. Or see the GKE guide for the alternative deployment target; either way, if you deploy into a RAD-managed project you can pause the whole thing for free when you are not using it -- see Pause it for free below.

What you pay on RAD

	Your own project	RAD-managed project
Module fee	40 credits, once	36 credits, once (10% lower)
Build time	metered in credits as the build runs (a few credits, typically)	same
Google Cloud running cost	~$16.78/month, billed to your own billing account at Google's list price	~3 credits/day, metered hourly by RAD at list price plus margin

Default running cost in your own project

Resource	US$/month (Google list price, us-central1)
Cloud Run, 1x vCPU / 0.5 GiB (scaleToZero)	$10.78
Cloud NAT and networking	$5.00
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	$1.00
Total	$16.78

How it compares

• SearXNG's own footprint here (1x vCPU / 0.5 GiB) is smaller than this reference class, so an even cheaper VPS tier would do just as well, but sized to the smallest commonly-quoted class for comparison: Hetzner CPX22 (2 vCPU/4GB) runs about $24/month, a DigitalOcean 2 vCPU/4GB Droplet is also $24/month, and a GCP Compute Engine e2-standard-2 (2 vCPU/8GB) is about $49/month -- plus the admin's own time for backups, security patches and upgrades, which RAD's managed Cloud SQL, Secret Manager and monitoring cover for you -- but RAD's price is never meant to beat a VPS, only to replace the admin time a VPS still needs.
• SearXNG is a lightweight search proxy queried on demand -- its own running cost is the smallest in this batch, and with no database to keep alive, deleting it recovers nearly all of the figure above.

Pause it for free: delete a RAD-managed project, restore it when you need it

This is the headline for a RAD-managed project. Deleting a RAD-managed project first unlinks its billing, then asks Google to delete the project outright -- Google's own 30-day recoverable soft delete. Unlike deleting one module, this does not tear down Cloud SQL, any VM or the compute resource one by one: the whole project simply stops, and nothing is charged while it waits, because billing is already unlinked.

Restoring, within 30 days and only by the project's owner, asks Google to undelete the project and reattaches its billing account, then asks you to run Update on each deployment to confirm everything came back. Because nothing was individually destroyed, that Update finds the same resources already there -- it is a check, not a rebuild, and an Update never charges the module fee again. This costs only a handful of credits (under US$1) in total for a typical 2-3-deployment chain.

What this needs: you must own the project (not one RAD only manages billing for), you must restore it yourself within 30 days -- after that Google deletes it for good -- and restoring is admitted like creating a new project, so your purchased credit balance must still clear the tier's floor (100 credits for the sandbox tier most study/demo use fits). Google says most services are fully working again within 36 hours of a restore.

One real gap: nightly backups are written to a bucket inside the project, and that bucket has Cloud Storage's soft-delete explicitly turned off, so it is very likely gone as soon as you delete the project -- even though the project itself is recoverable for 30 days. If you have customised the app and want to keep that work, copy a backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket outside the project) before deleting. For a default install with nothing irreplaceable in it, this does not matter.

Pay only while you use it, the other way: delete and redeploy

In your own project (or once you are past the 30-day restore window above), the alternative is to delete SearXNG outright and redeploy it later. A redeploy costs the module fee again, plus the builds -- roughly 40 + 3-6 credits of build time.

Deleting saves money only once SearXNG would otherwise sit unused long enough to clear that redeploy cost against its own daily running cost -- against the own-project total above, that works out to about 8 days or more. There is no database here to keep running after you delete it, so deleting this app recovers close to the full running-cost figure above.

Keep data first: nightly backups go to a bucket inside the deployment and are deleted with it, so copy the latest backup out before deleting if you want to keep it.

Lab sessions and Managed Environments

• Lab sessions, for training: a trainer runs a session for a class. Each participant gets the app in their own Google Cloud project for 15 minutes to 24 hours, within an allowance the trainer sets. Either the trainer funds every place, or each participant pays for their own. Everything is deleted when the session ends and unused credits go back to the trainer.
• Managed Environments, for consultancies: a partner runs the app for a client from a ring-fenced wallet it funds, and settles with the client directly. If the wallet runs low, billing pauses and the data is kept, so nobody receives an unexpected charge. At the end the partner hands the project over and the deployments become the client's own.
• Credits can be bought in more than 20 currencies, including XAF, XOF, NGN, GHS, KES and ZAR, by card, bank transfer or mobile money.

Sources (8 October 2026): Google Cloud Billing Catalog API list prices; radmodules.dev/pricing for RAD's own fees and daily-credit estimates; https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/delete-restore-projects for the pause/restore mechanics.

1. Overview

SearXNG runs as a lightweight Python/Flask container on Cloud Run v2. The deployment wires together a minimal set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	Cloud Run v2	Python/Flask service, 1 vCPU / 512 MiB by default, request-based autoscaling
Cache / rate limiting	Redis	Optional — disabled by default; backs the limiter's counters. Rate limiting also needs enable_limiter = true
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated SEARXNG_SECRET (session key) injected at runtime
Ingress	Cloud Run URL / Cloud Load Balancing	Default run.app URL, optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• No database is provisioned. SearXNG is fully stateless — it aggregates search results at request time and stores nothing.
• No NFS or Cloud Storage is provisioned. SearXNG has no uploads or shared files.
• min_instance_count is fixed at 0 (scale-to-zero). SearXNG cold starts are fast (under 5 seconds) because no database connections or migrations are performed on startup.
• The limiter is disabled by default, and Redis alone does not enable it. The RAD image pins server.limiter: false so the JSON API stays usable by internal server-to-server callers. For a publicly invokable deployment set BOTH enable_redis = true and enable_limiter = true, and exempt trusted callers via limiter_pass_ips, to get rate limiting and bot detection against upstream engine abuse.
• SEARXNG_SECRET is generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager. The same key is shared across all running instances — do not override it with a per-instance random value.
• Health probes target /healthz. SearXNG's built-in health endpoint returns 200 when the application is ready.
• vpc_egress_setting defaults to PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY. SearXNG must reach external search engines; ensure a Cloud NAT gateway is configured or switch to ALL_TRAFFIC.

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2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume PROJECT and REGION are set. Service and resource names are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. Cloud Run — the SearXNG service

SearXNG runs as a Cloud Run v2 service that autoscales by request load, scaling to zero when idle. Each deployment creates an immutable revision; traffic can be split across revisions for safe rollouts.

• Console: Cloud Run → select the service for revisions, traffic, logs, and metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run revisions list --service <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

See App_CloudRun for scaling, concurrency, execution environment, and traffic splitting.

Known limitation: the limiter cannot identify clients on Cloud Run

enable_limiter = true genuinely enables the limiter (/config reports limiter.enabled: true), but on Cloud Run it currently blocks every caller, allowlisted ones included. SearXNG logs:

ERROR:searx.botdetection: X-Forwarded-For nor X-Real-IP header is set!

botdetection.ProxyFix resolves the client in the order X-Forwarded-For → X-Real-IP → REMOTE_ADDR, falling back to the black-hole address 100:: when it finds none. Neither proxy header reaches the container on Cloud Run, so every request resolves to that same fallback: one shared identity, one shared token bucket, and limiter_pass_ips can never match because the address it compares against is not the caller's.

The failure is direction-dependent and easy to misread:

• With limiter_trusted_proxies empty, REMOTE_ADDR (a link-local address) is untrusted, the headers are discarded, and the resulting link-local client is not rate-limited by default — so the limiter is on and admits everyone.
• With private/link-local ranges trusted, the headers are consulted, found absent, and everything collapses to 100:: — so the limiter rejects everyone.

Verified live: 25/25 unauthenticated requests returned 429, and so did the allowlisted caller. Forged X-Real-IP and X-Forwarded-For headers were also rejected, so the allowlist is at least not spoofable.

Until the proxy headers reach the container, a publicly invokable Cloud Run instance cannot be protected by the limiter. Restrict access instead — an internal HTTP load balancer with a serverless NEG and ingress_settings = "internal-and-cloud-load-balancing", or IAP — and leave enable_limiter = false. The GKE variant is unaffected where an ingress controller sets X-Forwarded-For normally; set limiter_trusted_proxies to that controller's range.

B. Redis cache (optional)

enable_redis = true provisions the Redis backend the limiter keeps its per-IP counters in. It does not by itself turn rate limiting on: the RAD image ships server.limiter: false so the JSON API stays usable by internal server-to-server callers. Set enable_limiter = true as well to actually enable bot detection — the plan fails if you enable it without Redis. When redis_host is left empty and Redis is enabled, the module defaults to 127.0.0.1.

The limiter treats header-less API calls as bots, so list any trusted internal callers' source ranges in limiter_pass_ips or they will be throttled along with everyone else. Enable both on any instance reachable from the public internet: otherwise anyone who finds the URL can consume the upstream engine quotas it depends on.

• Console: Memorystore → Redis (if using a managed instance).
• CLI:

  redis-cli -h <redis-host> ping
  redis-cli -h <redis-host> info keyspace

C. Secret Manager — SEARXNG_SECRET

SearXNG_Common auto-generates the SEARXNG_SECRET session key and stores it in Secret Manager. This key signs SearXNG's session cookies and HMAC query parameters; all instances must share the same value. It is injected into the service at runtime.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

  gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret=<secret-name> --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for injection and rotation details.

D. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default. An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on; ingress settings and VPC egress control connectivity to external search engines.

• Console: Cloud Run (service URL); Network services → Load balancing.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" --format='value(status.url)'
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun.

E. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging; Cloud Run metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring, with optional uptime checks and alert policies.

• Console: Logging → Logs Explorer; Monitoring → Dashboards / Alerting.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services logs read <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --limit 50

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3. SearXNG Application Behaviour

• Fully stateless. SearXNG fetches results from external search engines at request time and stores nothing locally. No database migrations or initialisation jobs run.
• No first-deploy setup job. Because there is no database, the deployment completes without a db-init step — the service is ready as soon as the container starts.
• SEARXNG_SECRET is stable. The session key is generated once and persists in Secret Manager across service revisions. Rotating it invalidates all active user sessions; avoid rotation in production unless required for security.
• SEARXNG_BIND_ADDRESS is injected automatically as 0.0.0.0:8080 so SearXNG listens on all interfaces at its native port.
• ENABLE_REDIS is injected automatically; REDIS_URL only when enable_redis = true (it is omitted entirely otherwise, so a client cannot mistake an empty value for a real endpoint). The URL is derived from redis_host, redis_port and, when set, redis_auth — a Memorystore instance with AUTH enabled rejects a password-less URL.
• SEARXNG_LIMITER and SEARXNG_LIMITER_PASS_IPS are injected automatically from enable_limiter and limiter_pass_ips; the entrypoint substitutes them into server.limiter and writes /etc/searxng/limiter.toml.
• Health path. Both the startup and liveness probes target /healthz (HTTP GET), which SearXNG answers once the application is fully initialised.
• Fast cold starts. SearXNG starts in under 5 seconds — no database connections or schema migrations. The startup probe uses a 10-second initial delay.
• VPC egress for external engines. SearXNG fetches results from upstream search services over the internet. Ensure the VPC connector's egress is not restricted to private ranges only, or configure Cloud NAT for internet access.

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4. Configuration Variables

Variables are grouped exactly as they appear on the deployment platform. Only settings specific to or notable for SearXNG are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.

Group 1 — Project & Identity

Variable	Default	Description
project_id	(required)	Target Google Cloud project.
region	us-central1	Region for the service and regional resources.

Group 2 — Deployment Environment

Variable	Default	Description
tenant_id	demo	Short suffix that makes resource names unique per environment.
support_users	[]	Emails granted project access and monitoring alerts.
resource_labels	{}	Labels applied to all resources.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	searxng	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_name	SearXNG Search	Friendly name shown in the Console.
description	SearXNG — privacy-respecting metasearch engine on Cloud Run	Service description.
application_version	latest	SearXNG image tag; pin to a specific version for production.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
cpu_limit	1000m	CPU per instance. 1 vCPU handles moderate SearXNG traffic.
memory_limit	512Mi	Memory per instance. Scale to 1Gi for high-traffic public instances.
max_instance_count	3	Maximum instances (cost ceiling).
container_port	8080	SearXNG's native HTTP port.
execution_environment	gen2	Gen2 recommended for faster startup and improved networking.
timeout_seconds	60	Max request duration. Slow upstream engines may require raising to 120–300.
container_image_source	custom	Use the official SearXNG image (prebuilt) or build from source (custom).
cpu_always_allocated	false	Request-based billing — SearXNG is a stateless search proxy with no in-process background work, so CPU is only needed while serving a request.
enable_image_mirroring	true	Mirror the image into Artifact Registry before deployment.
enable_cloudsql_volume	false	Leave false — SearXNG does not use a database.
traffic_split	[]	Split traffic across revisions for staged rollouts.
max_revisions_to_retain	7	How many old revisions to keep.

Group 5 — Access & Ingress Control

Variable	Default	Description
ingress_settings	all	Which networks may reach the service. Use internal for private deployments.
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	How outbound traffic is routed through the VPC connector. Set ALL_TRAFFIC if Cloud NAT is not configured.
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in via Identity-Aware Proxy (internal deployments).
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access through IAP.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{ INSTANCE_NAME="SearXNG", AUTOCOMPLETE="", SEARXNG_BIND_ADDRESS="0.0.0.0:8080" }	Extra settings. ENABLE_REDIS and REDIS_URL are also injected automatically.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name for additional secrets (e.g., upstream engine API keys).
secret_propagation_delay	30	Seconds to wait after secret creation before proceeding.
secret_rotation_period	2592000s	Secret Manager rotation notification frequency.

Group 7 — Backup & Restore

SearXNG is stateless — there is no application data to back up. The backup variables are inherited from the foundation interface but have no practical use. See App_CloudRun.

Group 8 — CI/CD & Binary Authorization

Standard App_CloudRun Cloud Build / Cloud Deploy integration — see App_CloudRun. Key inputs: enable_cicd_trigger, github_repository_url, github_token, enable_cloud_deploy, enable_binary_authorization.

Group 9 — Custom SQL

Not applicable to SearXNG (no database). See App_CloudRun.

Group 10 — Load Balancer, CDN & Image Retention

Variable	Default	Description
enable_cloud_armor	false	Provision Global HTTPS LB + Cloud Armor WAF. Recommended for public deployments.
admin_ip_ranges	[]	CIDRs exempted from WAF rules.
application_domains	[]	Custom domain names for the HTTPS LB (Google-managed SSL).
enable_cdn	false	Enable Cloud CDN on the HTTPS LB backend.
max_images_to_retain / delete_untagged_images / image_retention_days	(set)	Artifact Registry cleanup policy.

Group 11 — Storage & Filesystem

Variable	Default	Description
create_cloud_storage	false	SearXNG is stateless — no GCS bucket is required. Leave false.
enable_nfs	false	SearXNG is stateless — NFS is not required. Leave false.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse mounts (not used by SearXNG).
manage_storage_kms_iam / enable_artifact_registry_cmek	false	CMEK options.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	NONE	Fixed — SearXNG does not use a database. Do not change.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	SearXNG requires no initialisation jobs — leave empty.
cron_jobs	[]	Optional scheduled tasks (e.g., cache warming).

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe / liveness_probe	HTTP /healthz	SearXNG's built-in health endpoint; startup allows 10s initial delay.
uptime_check_config	disabled	Optional Cloud Monitoring uptime check.
alert_policies	[]	Optional metric alert policies.

Group 21 — Redis

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Provision the Redis backend the limiter needs. Does NOT enable rate limiting on its own.
enable_limiter	false	Turn on the bot-detection limiter. Requires enable_redis. Set true on any publicly invokable instance.
limiter_pass_ips	[]	Source CIDRs exempt from bot detection, for trusted internal callers such as n8n.
redis_host	""	Redis endpoint. Leave empty to default to 127.0.0.1 when Redis is enabled; set to the Memorystore IP for a managed instance.
redis_port	6379	Redis port.
redis_auth	""	Optional Redis auth password (sensitive).

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

Variable	Default	Description
enable_vpc_sc	false	Enforce a VPC-SC perimeter (requires organization_id).
vpc_cidr_ranges / vpc_sc_dry_run	(set)	Access level CIDRs / dry-run mode.
enable_audit_logging	false	Detailed Cloud Audit Logs.

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5. Outputs

Returned on a successful deployment — the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Cloud Run service name.
service_url	Default run.app URL of the service.
service_location	Region the service runs in.
stage_services	Stage-specific service URLs (Cloud Deploy).
load_balancer_ip / load_balancer_url	External HTTPS load balancer IP / URL (when enabled).
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets (empty for SearXNG).
network_name / network_exists / regions	VPC network, presence, regions.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed image and Artifact Registry repo.
monitoring_enabled / monitoring_notification_channels / uptime_check_names	Monitoring status, channels, uptime checks.
initialization_jobs	Names of any setup jobs (none by default).
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and details.
github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name	GitHub connection details.
artifact_registry_repository / cloudbuild_trigger_name / cloudbuild_trigger_id	Registry and build trigger.
vpc_sc_enabled / vpc_sc_perimeter_name / vpc_sc_dry_run_mode	VPC-SC status.
audit_logging_enabled / artifact_registry_cmek_enabled	Audit logging and CMEK status.

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6. Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults

Risk: Critical (data loss / outage / security) — High (service degraded) — Medium (cost or partial degradation) — Low (minor).

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
SEARXNG_SECRET (auto-generated)	auto-generated	Critical	If overridden with a per-instance random value, each cold start produces a different key, invalidating all existing session cookies. Always use the auto-generated Secret Manager value.
database_type	NONE	Critical	Changing to a real DB type provisions an unused Cloud SQL instance and breaks startup.
vpc_egress_setting	ALL_TRAFFIC or Cloud NAT configured	High	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY blocks SearXNG's outbound requests to external search engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.), returning empty results.
enable_redis	true for public deployments	High	Without Redis, SearXNG has no rate limiting; public instances are vulnerable to scraping that exhausts upstream engine quotas.
redis_host	Memorystore IP or explicit value	High	When enable_redis = true and redis_host = "", the module defaults to 127.0.0.1 — there is no sidecar Redis in Cloud Run, so rate limiting is silently disabled.
timeout_seconds	60–300	Medium	SearXNG waits for all enabled search engines; slow upstream engines may need up to 30 seconds per request. Too low causes 504 errors before results are aggregated.
application_version	pinned (not latest)	Medium	Using latest makes deployments non-reproducible; a new SearXNG release may change config schema.
enable_cloud_armor	true for public deployments	Medium	Without Cloud Armor, there is no WAF/DDoS protection on the public endpoint.
enable_iap	true for internal-only	Medium	For internal search deployments, IAP restricts access to authenticated Google accounts.
ingress_settings	all for public; internal for private	Medium	all is intentional for a public meta-search engine; combine with Redis rate limiting and Cloud Armor for production.

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For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — service identity, scaling and concurrency, ingress and load balancing, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_CloudRun. SearXNG-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in SearXNG_Common.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: SearXNG on Cloud Run — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• SearXNG on GKE Autopilot — the same application on Kubernetes, for when you need the other deployment target.
• SearXNG Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.
• Deployed alongside Ollama on Google Cloud Run, LiteLLM on Google Cloud Run, Qdrant on Google Cloud Run, Open WebUI on Google Cloud Run in the Private AI Assistant solution.