Arvau (beta) is a search engine for the good parts of the internet.

Create an account, then buy it here.

FAQ

What sites are indexed?

• Wikipedia

• Some Stack Exchange sites (Stackoverflow, etc)

• MDN

• ArchWiki

• Rust docs

More coming soon

Does Arvau use Google/Bing/etc for results.

No. Arvau’s index is entirely custom.

What happens after I stop receiving updates?

You will be able to keep using arvau.com with the last version of Arvau you could access. You will not receive any updates to the index or new features, however, so results may become out of date.

Does that mean I can keep using Arvau.com forever after paying once?

Probably not, but at least for a few years after updates end Arvau LLC will try to maintain your version. This does not apply to Lite or Enterprise. See the Terms of Service for exact terms.

Is it private?

Arvau.com records the following data:

• Number of searches total.

• Number of searches every two week period.

• Payment information.

• Goatcounter stats.

If you self host, no data is sent and everything is stored locally.

If you are using Arvau’s free demo or are not logged in (you will see a warning on the search page), telemetry may be collected.

See the privacy policy for more details and exhaustive list.

Is it Open Source?

If you purchase the Personal (but not Lite) version, you will receive AGPLv3-licensed source code. Arvau Enterprise does not include source code, but all versions use the same codebase.

What does being in beta mean?

Some features are not yet available, and you will find bugs, including missing text in articles. Come back in a few months to see Arvau v1!

Is there a limit on the amount of searches I can make?

For Personal, there are no hard limits right now, although making far more searches than a power user using Arvau as their primary search engine would make may lead to ratelimiting.

For Lite, you get 800 searches per month.

Why index so few sites?

Arvau only includes sources known for their helpful and human-written content.

Do bangs work?

Bangs are redirects to other search engines triggered by an exclamation mark at the front of a query. Many bangs from other search engines work in Arvau too. In addition to those, you can use:

• !t: Show only results from the full text index

• !v: Show only results from the vector index [COMING SOON]

• !vt: Show results from both indexes (default) [COMING SOON]

Do search operators work?

Yes, standard operators like "", +, -, AND, OR, and () work. Note that they only work with the full text index, so the vector index is disabled when they are detected. Use !vt to override this and see vector results [COMING SOON] too.

I used quotes but the results don’t contain that term

Use + instead:

This search *may* contain results "for these terms in this order" and *will* contain only results with +these +words

Will the demo always be available?

Not necessarily, please do not depend on it.

What is the refund policy?

You can receive a refund within 30 days of purchasing Arvau by emailing refund@arvau.com with your account number.

Even if you’re outside of this period, please don’t issue chargebacks! Instead, contact support@arvau.com.

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