4 open-source AI answer engines you can use instead of Perplexity. Self-described alternatives are labelled separately from our own picks.
Editorial picks: open-source projects that do a similar job to Perplexity.
ItzCrazyKns/Vane
Self-hosted AI answering engine that searches the web via SearXNG and answers with citations using local or cloud LLMs.
docker run -d -p 3000:3000 -v vane-data:/home/vane/data --name vane itzcrazykns1337/vane:latest
zaidmukaddam/scira
Minimal AI search engine (formerly MiniPerplx) that cites sources, built on the Vercel AI SDK.
docker compose up
miurla/morphic
AI answer engine with a generative UI; self-host with your own model and search providers.
docker compose up -d
dzhng/deep-research
Simplest open implementation of an iterative deep-research agent combining search, scraping and LLMs.
npm installStars, licences and last-commit dates come from the GitHub REST API, fetched 17 Oct 2026. Archived repos, repos with no commit in 12 months and non-open licences are excluded. Install commands are copied from each README.
Our picks: Vane (formerly Perplexica), Scira, Morphic, deep-research. Each one is open source; check the licence before commercial use.
The software is free to use under its licence. You still pay for your own hosting and for any model API you connect, unless you run a local model.
Cursor · GitHub Copilot · Claude Code · Lovable, Bolt.new and v0 · ChatGPT · Notion · NotebookLM · Vercel, Netlify and Heroku