The best private search engines in 2026

I switched off Google as my default search engine back in 2021, the same year I found out Startpage’s parent company had sold a majority stake to System1, a US ad-tech firm. That was the moment it clicked that “private search engine” is a label, not a guarantee. Some of these companies have been bought, some quietly changed their backend index, and some are still exactly what they say on the tin. This list is for anyone who wants an actual default search engine for daily use, not a novelty they open once and forget.

I run privacy and proxy infrastructure for a living out of Singapore, so I look at these tools the way I look at any vendor: who owns them, what happens to the query after I hit enter, and whether the thing actually works when I need to find something obscure at 1am. I tested each of the seven picks below as my real default for at least two weeks, on desktop and mobile, before writing a word.

One honest caveat up front. None of these fix the problem of you staying logged into Gmail or Facebook in the same browser tab while you search. A private search engine narrows what the search company itself can see. It doesn’t anonymize you from everything else running in that browser.

how I picked

whether the company runs its own crawler and index, or is quietly renting Bing’s or Google’s results underneath a privacy-friendly wrapper
what happens to the query after submission: logged and tied to an IP, sold to ad networks, or discarded
who owns the company today, not who founded it five years ago
price, because a “free” search engine pays its bills somehow and I want to know how
whether I could set it as my phone’s default and stop thinking about it
result quality on real, everyday queries, not just privacy-forum test searches like “what is my IP”

the picks

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is still the easiest on-ramp on this list. No account, no setup, works the moment you set it as your default in Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. It doesn’t build an ad profile on you, and its privacy policy spells out plainly that it doesn’t store your search history tied to you. It blends its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, with licensed results from Bing and roughly 400 other sources, so it’s not a fully independent index, but for general queries you rarely notice.

I still use its !bangs shortcut system daily, !yt to jump straight to YouTube search, !w for Wikipedia. That alone saves me more time than any privacy feature.

zero setup, works as a drop-in Google replacement on every platform
App Tracking Protection on Android blocks trackers in other apps, not just the browser
bangs let you route a query to hundreds of other sites instantly
inherits Bing’s blind spots on niche or very recent pages since it leans on that index
App Tracking Protection is Android-only, nothing equivalent ships for iOS

Pricing: free, revenue comes from non-personalized search ads and affiliate links. Read my full writeup: /reviews/duckduckgo

Brave Search

Brave Search matters because it’s one of a very short list of engines that built its own index from scratch instead of licensing someone else’s. Brave started crawling independently in 2021 and now serves most queries without touching Bing or Google. You can run it standalone at search.brave.com without installing the Brave browser at all.

The feature I actually use is Goggles, a way to write or install custom re-ranking rules so you can, say, deprioritize SEO content farms or boost only .edu and .gov sources for a research query. It’s the closest thing to controlling your own algorithm that I’ve found on any consumer search engine.

genuinely independent index, rare among the names on this list
Goggles lets you rewrite ranking logic per search, community goggles are shareable
no query logging, works standalone without the Brave browser
index is still smaller than Google’s, so obscure long-tail queries sometimes come up thin
the built-in AI answer summaries can be confidently wrong like any LLM-generated summary

Pricing: free for standard web search, Brave also sells a metered developer Search API for teams building on top of the index. Read my full writeup: /reviews/brave-search

Mojeek

Mojeek is the one most people haven’t heard of and the one privacy purists tend to point to first. It’s a UK company out of Brighton, founded in 2004 by Colin Hayhurst, and it’s genuinely one of the only search engines on earth running its own crawler and index end to end, alongside Google, Bing, and Brave. Everyone else on this list, including some names people assume are independent, is reselling one of those four indexes underneath a privacy layer.

Mojeek doesn’t build user profiles, doesn’t use tracking cookies, and its about page is refreshingly plain about what it does and doesn’t collect. I keep it as a secondary tab next to my main engine rather than my sole default, because of the tradeoff below.

fully independent crawler and index, no reliance on Google or Bing infrastructure
no tracking cookies, no personalization, no ad profile built on you
has been operating and profitable as a small independent company since 2004
much smaller index than the majors, so it misses obscure or very recent pages
image and video search are noticeably thinner than the rest of this list

Pricing: free for personal search. Read my full writeup: /reviews/mojeek

Kagi

Kagi is the one I actually pay for out of my own pocket, which is a stronger endorsement than anything else I can say about it. It’s subscription-only, no ads anywhere, and it blends its own signals with results pulled from multiple indexes, then lets you permanently pin or block domains. I’ve blocked Pinterest and a handful of recurring SEO content farms from my results entirely and never looked back.

Because Kagi’s revenue is the subscription, not advertising, the incentive to keep you clicking through low-quality pages just doesn’t exist the way it does for an ad-funded engine.

no ads at all, because subscribers are the entire business model, not an ad network
permanent domain blocking and pinning, which noticeably cleans up results over time
Kagi Assistant AI chat cites its sources instead of just asserting an answer
paid only, with no generous free tier beyond a short trial
cost adds up fast for a household that needs more than one account

Pricing: Kagi’s plans start around $5 a month for a capped number of searches, jump to roughly $10 a month for unlimited on the Professional tier, and $25 a month for Ultimate with extra AI assistant credits and family options. Check the pricing page directly since Kagi adjusts tiers periodically. Read my full writeup: /reviews/kagi

Startpage

Startpage’s whole pitch is simple: you get Google’s actual search results, proxied so Google never sees your IP address, your device, or your account. It’s based in the Netherlands and operates under GDPR, and it has a genuinely useful Anonymous View feature that opens any result link through its own proxy so the destination site doesn’t see your IP either.

Here’s the part I’d get argued with about. In 2019, a majority stake in Startpage was sold to System1, a US ad-tech company that runs performance marketing and search-ad businesses elsewhere in its portfolio. Startpage says the search product’s privacy practices haven’t changed, and I haven’t caught them logging anything they claim not to. But an ad-tech company owning your privacy search engine is a structural conflict of interest I’m not willing to ignore just because nothing’s gone wrong yet. I use it for the rare query where I specifically want Google-quality results without a Google account attached, and nothing more sensitive than that.

Google-quality results without a Google account or IP tied to the query
Anonymous View proxies outbound clicks so destination sites don’t see your IP
EU-based and operating under GDPR
majority owned by System1, a US ad-tech company, since 2019
fully dependent on Google’s index, so no independent underlying data of its own

Pricing: free, ad-supported with non-tracking ads. Read more on Startpage’s own privacy policy for exactly what it says it does and doesn’t log.

SearXNG

SearXNG is the open source, actively maintained metasearch engine, a fork that picked up development after the original searx project slowed down. It queries a bunch of other engines at once, strips out tracking parameters, and returns a blended result without you ever hitting those engines directly. You can self-host it on a small VPS via Docker in under an hour, or use one of the public instances listed at searx.space if you’d rather not run your own.

I self-host mine on a $6-a-month VPS next to some other infrastructure I already run, so my read on this is skewed toward someone comfortable with a terminal. If you’re not, a public instance is fine, but you’re trusting whoever runs it, which is a different privacy calculation than self-hosting.

fully open source and auditable, nothing hidden in a black box
self-hosting means you control the logs completely, which in my case means there are none
aggregates many engines at once, so coverage is broad even without its own index
self-hosting requires some technical setup, Docker plus a reverse proxy plus a VPS
public instances vary in trustworthiness since you’re relying on someone else’s server

Pricing: free, self-hosted or via free public instances. Self-hosting costs whatever your VPS costs, mine runs about $6/month. Documentation: docs.searxng.org

Ecosia

Ecosia is the odd one out here because its main pitch isn’t privacy first, it’s trees. The Berlin-based B-Corp puts its ad revenue toward tree planting, and it doesn’t sell personal data or build long-term ad profiles on users. Results are sourced primarily from Bing, similar to DuckDuckGo’s setup, so don’t expect an independent index.

I’m including it because plenty of people want “reasonably private” plus a business model they’re comfortable funding, and Ecosia fits that without pretending to be something stricter than it is. If your bar is maximum privacy full stop, this isn’t the tightest option on this list, Mojeek or Kagi beat it there. If your bar is decent privacy with a mission attached, it’s worth the tab.

doesn’t sell personal data or build long-term ad profiles for retargeting
ad revenue funds actual tree planting, transparent enough to check their own counter
B-Corp certified, based in Germany under EU data protection rules
results are sourced mainly through Bing, not an independent index
retains some data for a limited window for security purposes, unlike zero-log options on this list

Pricing: free, ad-supported.

comparison table

engine	price	primary strength	primary weakness
DuckDuckGo	free	easiest default, works everywhere instantly	leans on Bing’s index for coverage
Brave Search	free, paid API for developers	independent index plus Goggles custom ranking	smaller index than Google on long-tail queries
Mojeek	free	fully independent crawler and index	small index, thin on recent or obscure pages
Kagi	from ~$5 to ~$25/month	no ads, permanent domain blocking	paid only, no generous free tier
Startpage	free	Google-quality results without a Google account	majority owned by an ad-tech company since 2019
SearXNG	free (self-hosted or public instance)	open source, full control if self-hosted	needs setup, or trust in a public instance
Ecosia	free	funds tree planting, decent privacy stance	not an independent index, some data retention

how to choose

Start with what you’re actually defending against. If it’s advertisers building a profile to sell you shoes, DuckDuckGo or Brave Search cover that with zero effort. If you specifically don’t trust any company that ultimately answers to an ad-tech parent, cross Startpage off and look at Mojeek, Kagi, or your own SearXNG instance instead, since none of those three answer to an advertising business.

Independent index versus proxied index is the other axis that actually matters, and it’s the one most “best private search engine” lists skip. DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and Ecosia all lean on Bing or Google underneath their privacy layer. Brave and Mojeek run their own crawl. That doesn’t make the proxied options worse for privacy, since your query still isn’t tied to you, but it does mean their result quality is a ceiling set by someone else’s index, not their own engineering.

If you’re already running other privacy layers, a hardened browser, a VPN or residential proxy, maybe an antidetect setup for account work, a search engine is one piece of a bigger stack, not the whole thing. I write about that stack more broadly over at antidetectreview.org’s blog if you’re trying to reason about browser fingerprinting alongside your search choice. A private search engine narrows what one company sees. It doesn’t do anything about your browser fingerprint, your VPN’s logging policy, or whatever extensions you’ve got installed.

Budget is the last filter. If you won’t pay for search, your realistic free options are DuckDuckGo, Brave, Mojeek, Ecosia, or a self-hosted SearXNG instance that costs you a few dollars a month in server time instead of a subscription. If you’re fine paying, Kagi is the only one here built entirely around not needing an ad model to survive, and it shows in the result quality.

verdict / top pick

My honest daily driver is Kagi. I pay for it myself, I’ve blocked a dozen SEO farm domains out of my results permanently, and the fact that its business model doesn’t depend on me clicking ads changes what shows up on page one. If you don’t want to pay for search, DuckDuckGo remains the best zero-effort default for most people, and Brave Search is the better pick if you specifically want an independent index without a subscription. Mojeek is the one to reach for if independence and zero tracking matter more to you than result depth. None of them are a silver bullet on their own, more of a first honest layer.

Written by Xavier Fok

disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links. if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. verdicts are independent of payouts. last reviewed by Xavier Fok on 2026-08-18.