# codelibs/fess

Open-source, self-hosted enterprise & site search server built on OpenSearch. Crawls web / file / DB / cloud sources, 20+ languages, REST API, and AI/RAG & semantic search. Apache-2.0.

Repository: https://github.com/codelibs/fess
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/fess
Homepage: https://fess.codelibs.org
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: java, elasticsearch, full-text-search, lucene, crawler, enterprise-search, search-engine, search, ai-search, docker, elasticsearch-alternative, llm, mcp, opensearch, rag, rest-api, self-hosted, semantic-search, site-search
Last push: 2026-08-30T05:28:13+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 95/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 100, release rhythm 86, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4737, "days_push": 3, "days_rel": 13, "gap_med": 47, "n_releases_24m": 18}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1128, forks 175 (observed 2026-09-01T02:14:00.438147+00:00)

## What it is
Fess is an open-source, self-hosted enterprise search server built on OpenSearch with a browser-based admin UI, built-in crawlers for web sites, file systems, and databases, and a ready-made search UI with REST API. It supports 20+ languages, role-based result filtering, SSO, and AI/RAG semantic search features.

## Use cases
- self-host a site search engine for my website
- crawl and index PDFs and Office documents for full-text search
- replace Google Site Search with an open-source alternative
- build an internal enterprise search over file shares and databases
- add semantic search and RAG over company documents
- search across multiple data sources from one search box

## When to choose
- you need a turnkey search server with crawler, admin UI, and search UI included
- you want self-hosted search with permission-aware results and SSO
- you need multilingual full-text search without building on raw OpenSearch/Lucene

## When to avoid
- you need a lightweight embedded search library inside a single application
- you want fully managed cloud search without operating infrastructure
- your data sources require custom connectors not covered by its crawlers or plugins

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: search-engine, web-scraping, rag, llm-inference, api-framework, self-hosted
- domain: self-hosted, web-development
- platform: jvm, windows, self-hosted
- tags: full-text-search, crawler, opensearch, site-search, semantic-search, rest-api, enterprise-search, document-indexing, search, natural-language-processing, docker, linux, macos, web-server

## Member repositories
- codelibs/fess (main) score 95

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-09-01T02:14:00.438147+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:38:46.988496+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/codelibs/fess (fetched 2026-09-01T02:14:00.438147+00:00, sha 5338d84ea76b)
  - homepage: https://fess.codelibs.org (fetched 2026-08-29T12:43:19.640734+00:00, sha 8c27b79a0594)
  - site_page: https://fess.codelibs.org/documentation.html (fetched 2026-08-29T12:43:19.643728+00:00, sha 0f8fb7223d35)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.