What is cl0q?
cl0q is a free and fully open-source search engine. Instead of running on one company's servers, cl0q is powered by a distributed network of crawlers that together index thousands of new websites every day.
Use it right here on cl0q.com, or self-host the whole stack in minutes with Docker — the same code, running on your own machine with your own private index. No lock-in, no fees, no black box: you can read and run every line.
How the engine works
cl0q turns the open web into searchable results in three stages — and your query never gets stored along the way.
Crawl
A network of community-run crawlers continuously fetches and parses pages from across the web, pulling titles, descriptions, links and metadata.
Index
Those pages are normalized, enriched with DNS & network data, and stored in a full-text index ranked for relevance.
Search
You type a query and get ranked results in milliseconds — handled in memory and immediately discarded.
We don't log your searches
Privacy is the default, not an upsell. cl0q has no user accounts, no tracking cookies, and no search history. We rely on our network of crawlers to gather the index ahead of time, so answering your query never requires storing it.
- Queries are processed in memory and then discarded — never written to a database.
- No profiles, no behavioral ad targeting, no cross-site tracking.
- The code is open source, so these claims are auditable.
Join the crawler network
cl0q's index is only as strong as the network behind it. We rely on a community of crawlers — run by people like you — to discover and refresh the thousands of sites we index each day. The more crawlers, the broader and fresher the search.
Want to help keep the open web searchable? Run a crawler and contribute pages to the shared index. Come say hi and get set up:
Join our Discord (link coming soon)