Private search engines compared

A search engine sees some of the most personal things you type. Google and Bing tie searches to accounts and ad profiles. The engines below promise to collect less. This page compares them on four things you can check: what each says it logs in its own privacy policy, where its results come from, how it pays for itself, and where the company is based. We read each policy on November 13, 2026. Tunnelcheck hasn't audited any of them, and none of the policies we read points to an independent audit of its logging.

Private search engines at a glance

DuckDuckGo

What it logs. DuckDuckGo's privacy policy says "We don't save your IP address alongside your searches" and "We don't save or share your search, chat, or browsing history." It keeps anonymous search queries to improve its indexes (DuckDuckGo Privacy Policy).

Where results come from. DuckDuckGo runs its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, but says traditional links and images are "largely sourced from Bing". It says it doesn't use Google results (DuckDuckGo Help: sources, DuckDuckGo Help: Google).

Money. "We make most of our money from private search ads", which are based on the page you're viewing, not a profile. Ad clicks go through Microsoft's ad network, and the policy says Microsoft has committed not to tie ad-click behavior to a user profile (DuckDuckGo Privacy Policy).

Startpage

Startpage, based in the Netherlands, shows Google's results while acting as a go-between, so Google receives the search but not your IP address or cookies. In October 2019 Privacy One Group, owned by the adtech company System1, took a majority stake (Wikipedia: Startpage, CyberInsider). Startpage has said System1 can't see search data. Critics such as Reclaim The Net have said the ownership change was poorly explained. We couldn't load Startpage's own policy for this update, so read its privacy policy directly before relying on its logging claims.

Brave Search

Index. Brave says its index "is independent of other search engines". Logging. "Brave does not retain your IP address"; for bot detection, IP addresses are deleted within seconds. It does store de-identified query data, including the query text, platform, country, language and date. Money. It records clicks and views of ads on Brave Search, and it also sells Premium and an API (Brave Search privacy policy). Brave Software is a US company.

Mojeek

Mojeek is a small UK company that built its own crawler and index "from the ground up" (Mojeek: About). Its policy, updated November 5, 2026, says "We do not record IP addresses"; it replaces them with a two-letter country code. Server logs keep visit time and the page requested, which includes search terms, for 90 days. It sets no cookies unless you agree. Some ads come from adMarketplace, which receives your search terms and country code, and Mojeek also sells API access (Mojeek Privacy). Results can be thinner than Google's, which is the trade-off for a fully independent index.

Qwant

Qwant is French. It says it doesn't build user profiles from searches or track you across sites, and that its ads are based only on the keywords you just typed (Qwant Help). It says it runs its own index but uses Bing to fill gaps and for images (Qwant Better Web, 2023).

Ecosia

Ecosia is a German company that funds tree planting from its profits. It gets results and ads from Microsoft Bing and, for eligible users, Google. Ecosia says it anonymizes IP addresses internally within 7 days, while its partners keep data longer: its help center says Microsoft anonymizes IPs after 6 months, and Google after 9 months if you choose Google results (Ecosia Help, Ecosia Privacy).

Kagi

Kagi charges a subscription and shows no ads: "Our customers pay for a service and we provide them with a service." It says search queries are only logged temporarily for debugging and that payment information isn't used to link users to their activity. Kagi is a public benefit corporation and its terms are governed by Delaware law (Kagi Privacy). It runs its own small indexes, Teclis for the web and TinyGem for news, and makes anonymized API calls to "all major search result providers worldwide" plus specialist sources (Kagi Help: sources). Because you sign in to pay, Kagi knows who its customers are; its promise is that it doesn't connect that to searches.

SearXNG

SearXNG is free, open-source software, not a company. It "aggregates results from up to 260 search services" and says users "are neither tracked nor profiled". You can use one of about 70 public instances listed on searx.space, or run your own (SearXNG docs). The catch: privacy depends on whoever runs the instance you use. A public instance's operator can see your queries, so self-hosting is the strongest option.

Which one should you use?

There's no single winner, because the evidence is mostly the companies' own promises. Here's how the published facts line up:

• Want independence from Google and Bing? Brave Search and Mojeek run their own indexes. Qwant and Ecosia are building one.
• Want Google-quality results without Google seeing your IP? Startpage is built for that, with the ownership question above.
• Want no ads at all? Kagi, at the price of an account and a fee.
• Want to trust nobody? Run your own SearXNG instance.
• Want the easiest switch? DuckDuckGo is a built-in option in most browsers. See private browsers.

A private search engine hides your searches from ad profiles. It doesn't hide your visit to the sites you click on, and it doesn't hide your traffic from your internet provider. For that, see what a VPN does and VPN vs proxy vs Tor.