The initial version of Carrot² was implemented in 2001 by Dawid Weiss as part of his MSc thesis to validate the applicability of the STC clustering algorithm to clustering search results in Polish.

In the same year, version 2.0 was released with improved user interface and extended tool set.

In 2020, version 4.0.0 brought further simplification of the API, code cleanups and removal of the desktop Workbench.

Carrot² 4.0 is predominantly a Java programming library with public APIs for management of language-specific resources, algorithm configuration and execution.

Carrot² gave rise to a number of independent open source projects released under the umbrella of Carrot Search Labs.