toolchest_

Measured on a real homelab

SearXNG RAM & CPU requirements (measured)

On our homelab it uses about 63 MB of RAM on a normal hour, 95 MB in busy hours, and peaked at 122 MB over the last 30 days (private instance, low traffic).

What it really uses (process memory)

Typical (median)
63 MB
Average
54 MB
Busy hours (95th percentile)
95 MB
Highest recorded
122 MB
As docker stats shows it (with disk cache)
median 70 MB · peak 161 MB
Window
636 hours measured, up to Sep 26, 2026
Version
2026.9.25-12f8b6515
Stack (all summed)
searxng + Valkey
Workload
private instance, low traffic
Hardware
Intel i5-10600K · 23 GB RAM · Docker (Coolify)

Caveat (Oct 2, 2026): these figures count process memory held in RAM. When the server is under memory pressure, idle apps get part of their memory swapped out and it was not being counted, so the "typical" figure may be too low; the peak is reliable. We now measure RAM plus swap and will update these numbers.

What makes it grow

SearXNG publishes no official hardware requirements. In the resource calculator we use 256 MB minimum and 512 MB recommended, derived from this measurement of a low-traffic private instance (process memory peaked at 122 MB including Valkey; 161 MB counting disk cache). A public instance with real traffic needs more.

Sizing it

Our rule of thumb: plan for the highest process memory recorded plus 25% headroom: 192 MB. Our workload is small — scale it with the factors above before buying hardware.

Combine it with other apps in the resource calculator →

Build it: Rent a VPS · Buy a mini-PC

How we measure

Memory per container from Netdata on the same server, summed across the whole stack (app, database and cache) hour by hour. The main figures are the processes' own memory (anonymous memory: heap, stacks). The docker stats figure is higher because it also counts active disk cache — which Linux gives back when it needs it — and shared memory such as PostgreSQL's shared buffers. Hours where the main container had no data are left out, not counted as zero. Re-measured with a script, not by hand.

Other measured apps