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Privacy
Search engines
What are the best privacy-focused search engines?
11
Options
Considered
593
User
Recs.
Jan 2, 2024
Last
Updated
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Best privacy-focused search engines
Price
Category
Platforms
50
Searx
-
-
-
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Metager
-
-
-
35
DuckDuckGo
-
Search engine
-
--
Qwant
0
-
Windows, Linux, MAC, iOS, Android
--
Yacy
-
-
-
See Full List
50
Searx
My Rec
ommendation
for
Searx
My Recommendation for
Searx
All
11
Pros
6
Cons
5
Top
Con
•••
Extremely slow and sluggish
Search results load slowly
See More
Top
Pro
•••
The most private search engine
Since it can be hosted on your own server/ computer, it is very private, nothing leaves your computer. No cookies or ads too
See More
Top
Con
•••
Terrible UI
Dated Interface. Hard to use.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports instant answers
Uses Google and Bing, and hence has the 'quick answers' feature of both the search engines.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No search field
Just various links to their projects.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can add many search engines
Have a vast choice for choosing search engines
See More
Top
Con
•••
Difficult to use
Not user-friendly.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Very fast
Since it is a Python program with a web interface, it's very very fast even on a poor internet connection
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not very mobile friendly
Needs WSL2 for windows, and works natively on macOS and Linux. But no support for Android or iOS.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can use a proxy
Using a proxy called Morty hides the IP address of the user
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Extremely customisable
Since you have access to all the .yaml files, you can easily modify it to your needs.
See More
Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
76
55
--
Metager
My Rec
ommendation
for
Metager
My Recommendation for
Metager
All
7
Pros
4
Cons
3
Top
Con
•••
Uses Bing and Pixabay for image search
Very poor results, majority unrelated to specific search.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Allows to visit search results anonymously
See More
Top
Con
•••
Very poor results
Uses Bing but gained results are very poor and mostly unrelated to specific searches. General search provides more results but most of them unrelated or ads.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Open Source
See More
Top
Con
•••
Uses only Bing and Ecosia results
The latter of which could be their own crawler.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Tor network service
Gives access within Tor.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports easy search in open-street-map
Locations can be shown on open-street-map.
See More
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Get it
here
Recommend
7
18
35
DuckDuckGo
My Rec
ommendation
for
DuckDuckGo
My Recommendation for
DuckDuckGo
All
37
Experiences
1
Pros
11
Cons
24
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Using tracking methods
As any proud US tech company, they track everything: but they hide that using their own server network [like TOR but different]. More common to detect in search (see here)* the other methods are carefully hidden and very hard to discover.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Very protective of user privacy
DuckDuckGo does not collect or share any personal information. Their privacy page has a great rundown on why privacy is important. The most important repercussion of this is that DDG doesn't use the data collected to tailor results, avoiding exposure to the "Filter Bubble".
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WittyChiron's Experience
go to duckduckgo.com/donations they're donating to far-left communist organisations
See More
Specs
Category:
Search engine
Top
Con
•••
Horrible search results
They store no information about you (theoretically a pro) but this results in absolutely awful search results, and having to modify your search terms 4-5 times to get what you are looking for.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can function without JavaScript
Of course, it's nicer when enabled, but it's not required. Some browsers are too limited (mobile, terminal) or turn it off for security reasons (tor, etc.), and DDG still works.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Downranks misinformation results
Company announced that they are downranking misinformation results about the war by Russian media, after Russian's invasion of Ukraine.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has a .onion site
Only accessible from Tor.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Activism censorship
They started to block results based on activism.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Ads are non-obstructive and don't track you
The ads are clearly labelled as ads and are non-obstructive. The ads are based on the searched keywords and there's no tracking involved on their visibility. You just need to remember that the site the ad links to might track you.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Irrelevant search results
They store no information about you (theoretically a pro) but this results in absolutely awful search results, and having to modify your search terms 4-5 times to get what you are looking for.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Many customization options for appearance
DDG allows customizing almost any aspect of the search engine's appearance including fonts, page width, alignment, header behavior, site icons, etc and has a selection of premade themes available as well.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Dependent on Bing Search engine
Duckduckgo uses Microsoft Bing for the query.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can disable advertisements
The search engine allows freely disabling ads.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No date information in search results
In search results, there are no dates when the pages were published, which doesn't allow you to immediately know if the page is outdated.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has a wide spectrum of instant answers
For select queries DDG pops up a box that supplies the exact answer. For example, searching "stopwatch" will pop up a stopwatch, asking for "words like..." will show a list of related words, typing "password" will generate a password, etc.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Owner would compromise his service/customer privacy
In a question to Weinberg, “if you were served an NSL or were commanded to compromise your service/customer privacy in any way, would you and could you just pull the plug like Lavabit did or would you run into opposition from shareholders/investors that would prevent you from doing so?” Gabriel Weinberg said: “No one is preventing me from doing that.”
See More
Top
Pro
•••
No filter bubble
DuckDuckGo does not filter your search’s with the data that they have. You get to see everything the Internet has to offer in a safe, private way.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Search results are often unrelated and limited
Common conversions do not work, i.e. searching for 15F to C does not give you the conversion but just a bunch of conversion websites. Very frustrating. It's a simple thing but makes a huge difference to the browsing/searching experience. Also location based only works for the country you're in. Searching for, say, McDonalds only gives country results for McDonalds and no local results such as where a local restaurant may be. Not very helpful.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Sometimes results are better than Google
Sometimes the search results are better. Most of the times, they're at least as good as.
See More
Top
Con
•••
DuckDuckGo has many 'Owners'
DuckDuckGo is owned by Gabriel Weinberg who is is the founder, current CEO and controlling shareholder. Investors/shareholders include Union Square Ventures and several others. DuckDuckGo generates it’s income from advertising (Bing Ads) and collects affiliate revenue (Amazon, eBay).
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Top
Pro
•••
Allows searching from specific sites using bangs
Bangs are commands that allow searching via a different website's local search engine, using keywords or abbreviations with an exclamation mark (!). For example searching "world war ii !wiki" will automatically redirect to Wikipedia.org and show results for the query "world war ii" there, instead of DuckDuckGo, using Wikipedia's search engine. The more common sites have shortened alternatives for these commands. Such as !g for Google, !i for images and !yt Youtube. The whole list of bangs can be found by typing "!bang" in DuckDuckGo.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Hosted on Amazon servers (EC2)
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Infinite scroll of search results
DuckDuckGo results page is an infinite scrolling page, so you don't need to be clicking through pages.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Based in US, so they cannot guarantee there is no backdoor
See More
Top
Con
•••
Doesn't do personalized searches
Since they don't track you the results are not tailored to your interests.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Shows too few images
When searching for images only, it shows too few of them and only a handful are related to the search terms.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Referrers
A referrer is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referrer, the new webpage can see where the request originated.” Basically it tells a website where you came from. DDG does give this out.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Downranks "misinformation" results
Company announced that they are downranking misinformation results about the war by Russia media, after Russian's invasion of Ukraine.
See More
Top
Con
•••
DuckDuckGo and Yahoo Partnership
See here, here, and here.
See More
Top
Con
•••
DuckDuckGo has no 3rd party certifications
See More
Top
Con
•••
Search using language other than English is not so great
Korean would never use it.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Still not better than Google
Results are quite often not as good. They just lack resources to do it, for now.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Form over function (overall search experience is poor)
It's nice to adjust the settings and all but after a couple of days you will want to go back to a more functional search engine. Sure DDG looks shiny and !bangs are great but many wouldn't consider it as a viable alternative. Better results for search queries is more important than fancy looking CSS.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Cloud saving still needs work
Cloud save and the ability to pull up your settings on any device is a nice idea but the implementation needs work.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Bangs do not protect user privacy and can be misleading
Using these bangs will instantly connect you to the service you requested. For example typing “!g white cat with green eyes” and hitting return, drops you off on the Google website to display your results (thus logging your IP, search term and browser info immediately). It does not get you Google results inside DuckDuckGo. It is reasonable for DDG users to assume and expect a private search engine warns if there is a risk to that privacy being lost, like it does with Youtube videos but in the case of Bangs this does not happen.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Needs a clearer vision of the future
What's duck's goal or quest?
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here
Recommend
39
81
--
Qwant
My Rec
ommendation
for
Qwant
My Recommendation for
Qwant
All
21
Experiences
2
Pros
11
Cons
7
Specs
Top
Con
•••
They signed a censorship agreement in 2019
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Map search
Full Open Street Map functionality.
See More
Gáhkko's Experience
Excellent search results, committed to privacy, and being European means it's outside USAs homeland security surveillance sphere
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, MAC, iOS, Android
Top
Con
•••
Tracks user location
It's tracking user location very accurately, which means they harvest accurate fingerprints.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Based in Europe
Stricter data privacy protections as compared to the US.
See More
ModestKarkinos's Experience
let it work
See More
Top
Con
•••
Slow
It is slow. It loads like 5 images in 5 seconds whereas Searx and DuckDuckGo load almost everything in 5 seconds (10MB/s internet).
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Includes searching for: Images, News, Videos, Shopping, Social
See More
Top
Con
•••
New front page is messy
It used to be just a search field, but is now full of information about privacy browsing. It's all fine, but makes the main search page a colourful mess, really. Let's hope it's just an information campaign and all will return to normal soon 8-E
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Respects privacy
See More
Top
Con
•••
Requires JavaScript
Without enabled JavaScript you can't even type your search request.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Search functionality for children
Search engine designed for children's learning and their parent's peace of mind.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Does not allow to limit search result to last year
Max. limit is past month.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Includes a time filter (past 24H, past week, past month)
See More
Top
Con
•••
Requiers JavaScript
Without enabled JavaScript you can't even type your search request.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Fast
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Relevant results
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Cookie-free
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Modern and intuitive design
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Offers full (links, news, etc.) and light interface
See More
Hide
See All
0
Recommend
18
33
--
Yacy
My Rec
ommendation
for
Yacy
My Recommendation for
Yacy
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
11
15
30
Brave Search
My Rec
ommendation
for
Brave Search
My Recommendation for
Brave Search
All
13
Experiences
2
Pros
5
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Anonymous Data collected (Opt in only)
Brave Search collects some anonymous data (can be opted out) such as the number of searches made per day, and the browser version and OS version used during query. But Brave Search does NOT record or collect the Search Query itself, not even anonymously, making Brave Search more privacy-respecting than Duckduckgo. Find out more here.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Does not track geo-location
Doesn't use localization API or Fingerprinting for geo-location. Is not even interested to localize by ISP IPs.
See More
LivelyAnagolay's Experience
I use Brave Search everyday. Extremely relevant results. Fast. Modern Interface. 0 tracking. Excellent search engine.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
All
Category:
Search engine
License:
Proprietary
Multi Language Support:
Not yet
See All Specs
Top
Con
•••
Personal data is being sold to finance their own business
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has its own indexing engine
Independent search. Does not depend on other search engines for results, unlike Duckduckgo, which depends on Bing.
See More
IngrownMink4's Experience
Closed Source
See More
Top
Con
•••
English only for now (in Beta)
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Relevant Results (better than Duckduckgo)
Search results in Brave are much more relevant than Duckduckgo. Impressive search engine!
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not clear how to navigate settings
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great privacy policy
Everything is detailed here.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Brave's CEO is anti-LGBTQ
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Multiple region support
See More
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FREE
Recommend
26
67
--
Swisscows
My Rec
ommendation
for
Swisscows
My Recommendation for
Swisscows
All
7
Pros
5
Cons
2
Top
Con
•••
It's children-safety filtered
It's children safety filtered, as a result, censorship and surveillance highly probable.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Based in Switzerland
See More
Top
Con
•••
Seem hypocritical
They claim to block violent content yet readily bring up Fox News, a know fascist supporting, violence encouraging sources. They censor art like Michaelangelo's David.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Blocks inappropriate sites by default
Swisscows includes filtering for children.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
They have a VPN and privacy-focused email service coming out soon
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Privacy-focused
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Gives great and relevant results
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Hide
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Free with optional paid plans.
Recommend
11
17
--
StartPage
My Rec
ommendation
for
StartPage
My Recommendation for
StartPage
All
12
Pros
9
Cons
3
Top
Con
•••
Owned by advertising company
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Based in Netherlands (Europe)
StartPage is based in The Netherlands, where privacy is protected by law, so it is not subject to the same mandates and laws which is one (BIG) less thing to worry about. They own and operate their own servers in colocated facilities both in the U.S. and internationally.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Uses only Google search results
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Privacy focused
Unlike Google, Startpage does not record user IP addresses and strips away any uniquely identifying user information before sending the search request to Google. For each search result, Startpage also provides users with the option of viewing them via Ixquick's proxy services known as Ixquick Proxy.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Search results indicate tracking
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Recommended for its no-logging privacy
Your IP address, search query, what site you came from and what site you click on in the results, none of this is logged. That is, by the search engine operators themselves. Even Edward Snowden recommended StartPage for its no-logging privacy.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Certification
StartPage has been audited by a 3rd party; EuroPriSe. They look at the use of cookies (all kinds), logging, web hosting and content delivery networks, use of social plugins and much more. This certification is renewed every two years. Having a trusted and respected 3rd party verify your claims is a big plus. https://www.european-privacy-seal.eu/EPS-en/Ixquick-startpage
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Filter by time like Google
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Independent & private
StartPage is owned by Surfboard Holding B.V., a privately held, independent Dutch company, run by Robert Beens, whose only activities are operating StartPage, Ixquick and StartMail. No 3rd party investors or venture capital behind it as far as I could find. StartPage (and Ixquick) generates income solely from advertising (Google Ads).
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Offers a free proxy with every search results
The optional proxy allows you to visit linked sites anonymously too. While in the protection of the StartPage proxy, the third-party sites and its advertisers cannot "see" you. Plus, the site cannot download malware onto your computer.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Pulls results from two search engines
Startpage is a hybrid search engine combining results from Ixquick and Google.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Referrers
A referrer is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referrer, the new webpage can see where the request originated.” Basically it tells a website where you came from. Startpage does not give this out.
See More
Hide
See All
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Recommend
21
61
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Brave
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Brave
free
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17
8
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Gomu
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Gomu
My Recommendation for
Gomu
Get it
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9
1
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yoursearch.ai
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yoursearch.ai
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