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SurfSense — Live-web connectors, RAG knowledge base, agents, REST API, and MCP in one research platform

OSS health 96
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Stars
16,160
Primary language
Python
License
Not determined
Repository last updated
Sep 17, 2026

Overview

SurfSense exposes live data from Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Google Search/Maps, Indeed, Amazon, and other sources to agents through REST and MCP, while storing findings in a searchable RAG knowledge base. Its stack includes FastAPI/Python, Next.js/TypeScript, PostgreSQL/pgvector, and support for local models such as Ollama and vLLM. The latest release checked is v0.0.40.

Features and best fit

Based on official documentation; not hands-on tested · Content checked:

Expose platform-specific live data as typed REST endpoints and MCP tools

Connectors return structured items for social, search, reviews, jobs, products, and open-web pages through a common API. The same catalog is exposed by the MCP server so Claude, Cursor, and other agents can use retrieval primitives without driving a browser for every page.

Sources: [2]

Connect live retrieval to a RAG knowledge base and automations

Fetched data, uploaded files, cloud-drive sync, and local folders can feed a knowledge base with semantic plus full-text search and cited answers. Scheduled or event-triggered agent turns can also write results back into systems such as Notion, Slack, Linear, and Jira.

Sources: [2]

Self-host in 3 steps

1. Install Docker and run the official docker/scripts/install.sh on Linux/macOS or install.ps1 on Windows.

2. Configure LLM and embedding providers; choose Ollama/vLLM for a private model path and add only the connector credentials you need.

3. Call a connector through REST or MCP, save results into a workspace/knowledge base, and verify citation-backed research.

Sources: [2][5]

For teams that want live web data and private knowledge behind the same agent research layer

SurfSense fits workflows that go beyond static document Q&A and need current web, social, search, or review data inside agent automation. A self-hosted deployment can keep the model, database, and connector orchestration within controlled infrastructure while exposing REST/MCP to existing agents.

Sources: [2]

Account for pre-1.0 churn, scraping terms, automatic updates, and mixed licensing

At v0.0.40 the project is still pre-1.0, so connector and schema changes should be regression-tested. Users remain responsible for site terms, robots policies, privacy, and applicable law when scraping. The self-host installer enables daily Watchtower updates unless disabled, which may conflict with pinned production deployments. Most code is Apache-2.0, but surfsense_backend/app/proprietary/ is under BSL 1.1.

Sources: [2][3][4][5]

Official sources

  1. [1]MODSetter/SurfSense — GitHub repository metadata(2026-09-17)
  2. [2]SurfSense — README(2026-09-17)
  3. [3]SurfSense v0.0.40 release(2026-09-17)
  4. [4]SurfSense — LICENSE(2026-09-17)
  5. [5]SurfSense — Docker installation documentation(2026-09-17)
Supplemental curator note

Treat SurfSense as a research platform increasingly centered on live-web connector/API/MCP primitives for agents, not only as a NotebookLM clone.

Try it in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Get the source

    git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MODSetter/SurfSense.git
  2. 2

    Enter the repository

    cd SurfSense
  3. 3

    Check the official steps

    Continue with the commands in the README Installation, Quick Start, or Getting Started section.

    find . -maxdepth 1 -iname 'README*' -exec sed -n '1,220p' {} \; -quit
Check the official README

Growth

Growth trends · Last 30 days

16,160 Stars

Trend data is still being collected.

Development activity

Last 90 days · weekly

Commits (last 30 days)
739
Open PRs
4

Development activity is still being collected.

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GitHub data

GitHub dataView detailed GitHub data
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GitHub Topics

  • ai
  • fastapi
  • langchain
  • nextjs
  • rag
  • python
  • typescript
  • notebooklm
  • ollama
  • agent
  • agents
  • langgraph
Stars
16,160
Forks
1,537
Watchers
93
Open issues
126
Primary language
Python
License
Not determined
Repository last updated
Sep 17, 2026
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