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Sosse vs Fess: catalog facts
Sosse	Fess
Free Open source under the AGPL-3.0 license.	Free Free and open source under Apache-2.0; commercial support is available.
Web, Self-hosted, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, Self-hosted
Searches crawled and archived pages Supports offline browsing of saved pages	Crawler, indexer, admin console and search UI included Indexes Office, PDF and archive files from many sources
Requires self-hosting	Non-Docker installs need a separate OpenSearch setup Requires Java 21 and server resources
Downloadable app, Web application, Self-hosted	Downloadable app, Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License: AGPL-3.0	License: Apache-2.0
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 8, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 2, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.