# Best alternative search engine option that actually works? **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/best-alternative-search-engine-option-that-actually-works/38106 **Category:** Questions **Created:** 2026-05-24T01:10:55Z **Posts:** 62 ## Post 1 by @ParkerS — 2026-05-24T01:10:55Z Hiya, I’ve heard that Google appears to finally be fully integrating “AI” (machine learning) into their search engine. [Techcrunch article](https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/) [Digiday media briefing](https://digiday.com/media/media-briefing-publishers-brace-themselves-for-the-zero-click-era-amid-googles-ai-search-overhaul/) [Arstechnica article](https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/05/buckle-up-google-is-set-to-remake-search-with-agentic-ai-in-2026/) I’ve already moved my email/drive/that stuff over to Proton last year, (at least, what I can. It’s really difficult to redirect decades of different websites being given the same email addresses. All my gmails redirect to my proton mail. I’ve totally left the Google ecosystem for things besides mail & search.) But I’ve still been using Google search (-AI), because previously in my experience it just simply has more content than other search engines I’ve tried and I also really appreciate Google Scholar & the integration with Google Maps. Granted I haven’t tried another search engine in years. Can anyone make any recommendations of another search engine that actually respects privacy and isn’t using AI, but also actually has as wide of a range of results, features, and integrations as Google search? Thanks in advance. --- ## Post 2 by @seize — 2026-05-24T01:46:36Z Obligatory link to relevant Privacy Guides Page: [Recommended Search Engines: Anonymous Alternatives to Google - Privacy Guides](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/search-engines/) Personally I think this question comes down to what you consider a: > [@ParkerS](#): > > wide of a range of results, features, and integrations as Off hand I would probably recommend Brave search or Startpage here. Side note: I still use and appreciate google scholar and have failed to find a psuedo-academic search engine with matching results quality. --- ## Post 3 by @Expert4870 — 2026-05-24T02:07:26Z Brave has good results except images, for me. --- ## Post 4 by @Menkork — 2026-05-24T02:26:09Z I mostly stick with Brave Search because I want to support it, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have some pretty bad gaps. Regular search can be decent enough, even though they’re not exactly great, but image search is virtually useless. Kagi isn’t one of the recommendations here, but I’ve had better results with it than with any other search engine I’ve ever used. I don’t love the idea of paying for search, and I wish their monetization model had a better middle ground, but as far as quality goes, Kagi has been hard to beat. --- ## Post 5 by @Astravaris — 2026-05-24T02:56:50Z I second Kagi. I’ve been using it for the past couple of years, and it’s been worth the money to me. So much so that I have a subscription for myself and an additional family subscription that I pay for my sister, her husband, and their children. It gives much better results than DuckDuckGo and better results than Brave IMO, and it supports Privacy Pass. --- ## Post 6 by @Bad.Lyonnais — 2026-05-24T08:17:57Z I use Kagi and I’m very happy with it. The search results are way better than any other search engine. --- ## Post 7 by @user1 — 2026-05-24T08:44:09Z No Ai duckduckgo > **[DuckDuckGo - Protection. Privacy. Peace of mind.](https://noai.duckduckgo.com/)** > > The Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. --- ## Post 9 by @pine — 2026-05-24T11:54:41Z I assume you’ve already read PGs recommendations (as @seize linked earlier), so here’s two recent threads about alternative privacy-oriented search engines, specifially PriEco and Hister (though I personally have experience with neither). > [@PriEco: New open source web search engine](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/prieco-new-open-source-web-search-engine/12611): > > Introducing PriEco: New private and eco-friendly web search engine! Edit: New dedicated URL is: [https://prieco.net/](https://prieco.net/)Edit 2: Updated information start from [PriEco: New open source web search engine - #41 by JojoYou](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/prieco-new-open-source-web-search-engine/12611/41) PriEco ([https://search.jojoyou.org](https://search.jojoyou.org)) is a result of my work to create a fully private search engine that also promotes ecological values. Privacy Highlights: PriEco never tracks or profiles you. It’s open source: [https://codeberg.org/JojoYou/PriEco/](https://codeberg.org/JojoYou/PriEco/) with AGPL v3 or later license: [--…](https://codeberg.org/JojoYou/PriEco/src/branch/master/LICENCE) > [@Hister: A free & self-hosted personal search engine](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/hister-a-free-self-hosted-personal-search-engine/37668): > > I’m working on a self-hosted search service called [Hister](https://hister.org/) with the goal to reduce dependence on online search engines. It can provide significantly more [privacy](https://hister.org/posts/hister-the-most-privacy-respecting-search-engine) than metasearch engines like Searx. Hister is a full text indexer for websites and local files which automatically saves all the visited pages rendered by your browser. It has a flexible web (and terminal) search interface, offline result previews & query language to explore saved content with ease or quickly fall back to traditional se… --- ## Post 12 by @privacy.slouchy — 2026-05-24T19:27:29Z Has duckduckgo fallen from grace? Been using it for ten years, never found a need to explore alternatives --- ## Post 14 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-05-24T20:27:14Z Basically, they have a relationship with Microsoft, and their search engine results is heavily reliant on Bing, so there is zero independence. --- ## Post 15 by @eteszi — 2026-05-24T21:58:18Z DDG is completely clogged with AI sites. Plus, DDG leaks GEOIP to the search engine by default, which potentially allows the engine to track the user. --- ## Post 16 by @privacy.slouchy — 2026-05-24T22:09:03Z Whats your preferred alternative? --- ## Post 17 by @trilobyte — 2026-05-24T23:07:50Z S Tier: Kagi supposedly, at least I’m told it’s very much worth the $5 a month. A tier: Searxng, startpage B tier: Brave C Tier: Yandex, google without personalisation, targeted ads, AI, or search result history enabled F Tier Duckduckgo. Sorry, I know you guys are legit, but your search results aren’t. Others: Not particularly notable compared to these. The problem is that AI is taking over the search _results_, so there’s increasingly more junk to filter through. Google is still the best from what I’ve seen. I like getting google results via searxng using the startpage source. --- ## Post 19 by @qrestr — 2026-05-24T23:48:30Z [noai.duckduckgo.com](http://noai.duckduckgo.com) seems to take care of this pretty well --- ## Post 21 by @eteszi — 2026-05-25T05:48:53Z > [@privacy.slouchy](#): > > Whats your preferred alternative? Definitely Kagi, for me the results are better than Google’s. Of the free ones, Brave is for general queries like movie titles, games, or news. Or public SearXNG instances, but the quality and stability aren’t great. > [@qrestr](#): > > [noai.duckduckgo.com](http://noai.duckduckgo.com) seems to take care of this pretty well NoAI removes the built-in AI in DDG and some AI images. For complex technical search queries, 9/10 sites are still AI. --- ## Post 22 by @Yinchie — 2026-05-25T10:31:41Z Another vote to Kagi. Well worth subscribing to. --- ## Post 27 by @TheDoc — 2026-05-26T22:08:02Z I find no search engine works well for everything so I just add multiple search engines to my browser so I can quickly and easily use whichever search engine I’d like by using shortcuts. If your browser doesn’t support that functionality you can use [DuckDuckGo bangs](https://duckduckgo.com/bangs) or [Brave bangs](https://search.brave.com/bangs) instead. Usually DuckDuckGo works fine but sometimes I’ll need to check Brave Search or Google instead. --- ## Post 30 by @anon32735431 — 2026-05-27T10:40:26Z I have tried Brave search and duckduckgo and I think brave is way better. --- ## Post 31 by @SMSPool — 2026-05-27T11:26:45Z Kagi and Brave Search are likely the closest you’re going to get to a Google like experience. --- ## Post 33 by @Cyvapri — 2026-05-28T20:45:10Z Check out [https://presearch.com](https://presearch.com) - own indexer - decentralized - no algo --- ## Post 34 by @Expert4870 — 2026-05-28T21:43:27Z I would pay like 1-3 dollars per month for Brave search since I use Brave browser with Brave search, so the ads are blocked. Not that I would ever click on a search ad, it would make me less likely to visit the site if there was an ad for it. Also paying for search would support them for their browser, which I use. But only if I could pay in Monero, which they don’t accept. I wonder if they make any money on search or if they are losing money. Kagi is way too expensive for me when Brave is comparable quality or better. It really depends, sometimes Kagi is better, sometimes Brave is better. I like Brave’s UI more. Brave’s AI answer is really good as well. --- ## Post 35 by @pine — 2026-05-28T21:56:32Z I’d prompt those curious about Presearch to read through its dedicated thread: [Presearch.com, Decentralized Search Engine](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/presearch-com-decentralized-search-engine/26708) --- ## Post 36 by @Cyvapri — 2026-05-29T07:17:12Z Thank you, I didn’t think to look for a dedicated thread, my bad. :face_savoring_food: Note on that thread: The last post is almost one year old. Take into account that this project is still running and evolving and a lot has improved since then. If you are really interested in getting away from centralized search engines Presearch is definitely the way to go. Just very important facts to consider: - they’re building their own search index, so they don’t rely on centralized BigTech ([https://news.presearch.io/presearch-3-0-summary-new-presearch-index-frontier-intelligence-web3-3cfb7f46eaa6](https://news.presearch.io/presearch-3-0-summary-new-presearch-index-frontier-intelligence-web3-3cfb7f46eaa6)) - Presearch is powered by tens of thousands nodes (you can easily participate) located all around the world, so again they don’t rely on centralized BigTech (DePIN: [https://nodes.presearch.com/](https://nodes.presearch.com/)) If you take time to read the whole philosophy behind, you realize that: :backhand_index_pointing_right:t3: we’re not talking about comparing search engines anymore: were talking about **paradigm change**. --- ## Post 37 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-05-29T09:36:07Z > [@Cyvapri](#): > > :backhand_index_pointing_right:t3: we’re not talking about comparing search engines anymore: we’re talking about **paradigm change**. If you are referring to the node network idea, YaCy already did that decades ago, except that they are open-source: > **[Home - YaCy](https://yacy.net/)** > > YaCy P2P - Decentralized Search Engine If you were referring to the Web3 tokenization, where node operators get issued speculative tokens of questionable value and limited transaction usage in the market, then sure, Presearch is introducing a paradigm change by copying the Web3 movement. --- ## Post 38 by @Cyvapri — 2026-05-29T11:15:03Z Sarcasm isn’t productive. I suggest reading what the essence of web3 and crypto is originally and not the corrupted usage made by unscrupulous speculators and noise made by AI generated posts. --- ## Post 39 by @mika — 2026-05-29T13:31:55Z Whoa, I had no idea DDG had a dedicated No-AI engine. Thank you for passing this along! --- ## Post 40 by @seize — 2026-05-29T13:36:47Z With Duckduckgo I also quite like [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/](https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/) which provides a JavaScript free/HTML only experience for when you need or want that. --- ## Post 41 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-05-29T14:30:56Z > [@Cyvapri](#): > > Sarcasm isn’t productive. Neither is suggesting to redirect me or others to read about Web3 and crypto somewhere else. If you can reference something explicit like I did, like Web3 + crypto benefits with Presearch, maybe we can get somewhere more educational and productive as a community. Right now, Web3 and crypto are very speculative and prone to market and social abuse, so I do not see a closed-source metasearch engine offering much over YaCy, even with both of our provided URLs. --- ## Post 42 by @Cyvapri — 2026-05-29T15:10:57Z Off topic --- ## Post 43 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-05-29T15:13:02Z Understood, Presearch’s Web3 tokenization and node operator’s financial incentives are out of scope, I can respect that framework. --- ## Post 44 by @mika — 2026-05-29T20:00:45Z > [@Menkork](#): > > Kagi isn’t one of the recommendations here, but I’ve had better results with it than with any other search engine I’ve ever used. I don’t love the idea of paying for search, and I wish their monetization model had a better middle ground, but as far as quality goes, Kagi has been hard to beat. > [@Astravaris](#): > > I second Kagi. > [@Bad.Lyonnais](#): > > I use Kagi and I’m very happy with it. I have long been tempted to use Kagi both because their business and business model is one I want to support and because I’ve read such unanimous praise of their search engine. I just haven’t been able to make peace with having all of my web queries tied together / tied to an account, though. Like if I want to customize their engine to suit my needs and use it to its full potential then it could potentially be very identifying. I know they have a Privacy Pass extension but according to their documentation it has some limitations. How have you all navigated the balance between privacy and functionality here? Do you use Privacy Pass? --- ## Post 45 by @Expert4870 — 2026-05-29T20:06:46Z > **Summary** > > I don’t use a browser with js turned off, but I’ve always liked these stripped down websites. Like [lite.cnn.com](http://lite.cnn.com) is sick, even though I don’t like cnn. > > They’re usually wicked fast as well. --- ## Post 46 by @pgtj — 2026-05-29T21:52:17Z There seems to be a lot of praise for Kagi. The biggest gap in my experience compared to Google with other free engines is the amount of relevant community created (forums, mainly) content Google finds and others don’t. How well does Kagi handle that? --- ## Post 47 by @sahqw — 2026-05-29T23:58:52Z Another for the curious: [text.npr.org](http://text.npr.org) --- ## Post 48 by @eteszi — 2026-05-30T00:19:30Z Kagi uses Google. 100 search queries are available for free, you can give it a try. --- ## Post 49 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-05-30T01:44:37Z > [@mika](#): > > How have you all navigated the balance between privacy and functionality here? Self-hosting. > [@mika](#): > > Do you use Privacy Pass? No. --- ## Post 50 by @mika — 2026-05-30T01:47:13Z The question was about Kagi specifically, aimed at the Kagi users in the discussion. --- ## Post 51 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-05-30T01:51:41Z Okay, so the “you all” was not literal, I understand now, correction noted. --- ## Post 52 by @mika — 2026-05-30T01:52:11Z I was referring to the folks I quoted and others using Kagi - apologies for being unclear. --- ## Post 53 by @brn — 2026-05-30T06:24:08Z I don’t quite think it’s fair I was given a notice and had my comment deleted when I mentioned the search engine I’m a co-founder of, but didn’t link to it _directly_ (linked to an independent entity talking about it), but a lot of people are talking about Kagi, here. Neither are recommended, so technically neither should be allowed to be discussed? Or is it because I’m a co-founder it’s considered impossible for me to be objective? In any case, it’s kind of a shame I can’t get to explain some differences and nuances about those, for people to make informed decisions, so I’ll just say Kagi doesn’t _only_ use Google; they use multiple engines, and generally outperform any non-paid search engine, in terms of relevance, because they use more than one search provider. For _most_ people (who don’t get into long-tail, more “technical” searches), this difference is often something they don’t care about or even notice, so they’re mostly paying to “protest” Big Tech and try to minimize the surveillance capitalism. I hope that makes sense and doesn’t break any rules. --- ## Post 54 by @pine — 2026-05-30T07:27:05Z Here’s Uruky’s recent thread for reference (- and note that as with PriEco and Hister, I have no personal experience with it): > [@Interview with the Engineer of Uruky, a Private Search Engine](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/interview-with-the-engineer-of-uruky-a-private-search-engine/38072): > > Here’s my interview with Bruno, a software engineer based in Portugal, who has created Uruky, a privacy search engine. I thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with him on this and hope the article will give his small project some much-needed exposure! [Interview with the Engineer of Uruky, a Private Search Engine](https://theprivacydad.com/interview-with-the-engineer-of-uruky-a-private-search-engine/) Bringing a privacy-first search tool to market is a challenging but rewarding task. You can find out more about Uruky [here](https://uruky.com/). Including its previous thread: [Uruky search engine (paid service)](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/uruky-search-engine-paid-service/37071) --- ## Post 55 by @seize — 2026-05-30T07:30:08Z Same thing happened to my previous reply here mentioning PriEco. Which in my opinion was approached from an informational perspective regarding the functioning of independent search engines vs any “real self promotion” on behalf of PriEco. --- ## Post 56 by @ParkerS — 2026-05-30T21:30:33Z > I find no search engine works well for everything so I just add multiple search engines to my browser so I can quickly and easily use whichever search engine I’d like by using shortcuts. If your browser doesn’t support that functionality you can use [DuckDuckGo bangs](https://duckduckgo.com/bangs) or [Brave bangs](https://search.brave.com/bangs) instead. Usually DuckDuckGo works fine but sometimes I’ll need to check Brave Search or Google instead. This seems like an interesting option to me but I don’t know how I’d do it or which search engines would be best for what purposes. Or what “bangs” are. I currently use Firefox with all the AI features turned off. (I am really, really bad at remembering keyboard shortcuts. I literally have dozens of the most common ones printed out and taped to my laptop next to the built in trackpad.) --- ## Post 57 by @seize — 2026-05-30T21:36:21Z > [@ParkerS](#): > > Or what “bangs” are. Bangs are like “!w” to search wikipedia directly from a search engine that supports bangs (like duckduckgo and brave). Here a “bang” just means the exclamation point, ! See also: [DuckDuckGo !Bangs](https://duckduckgo.com/bangs) --- ## Post 58 by @pershopai — 2026-05-31T15:56:41Z The new AI assisted search function requires as much information about the user _ **to be more helpful** _. The information gathering could be from existing user profile, plus continued conversation through search process (described in article). I think AI is here to stay, and can provide great value to our day to day live. Just the question of how to use it, who has the control of user data. I think users should have the control of their own data, to determine who and when the data can be used, for what purpose. And after the use, the data should NOT be retained by third-party, potentially/could be used for other purposes, such as (relatively inconsequential) serving ads, or selling your data to data brokers (search term: “Data Monetization”). There are several initiatives to solve this problem, to give control back to data owners. When AI is used to provide **better** **assistance** , that should be under the supervision of owners. P.S.: if you use Google search, you can delete your activities: [https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity](https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity) --- ## Post 59 by @Harisfromcyber — 2026-05-31T16:08:35Z I learned from [Reddit - r/technology](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1tsbhq7/comment/oouhezj) that you can just add that to your browsers as a search engine. - Mullvad has this built-in (Search Engine: DuckDuckGo (No AI)) - For Brave you have to manually add it go to `brave://settings/searchEngines` \> `Site search` \> `Add` (button) \> Name: DuckDuckGo (No AI) \<— can be whatever you want Shortcut: (make up anything here) URL with %s in place of query: `https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%s` then set that as default in brave For librewolf: `about:preferences#search` \> `Search Shortcuts` \> `Add` (button) \> Search engine name: DuckDuckGo (No AI) \<— can be whatever you want URL with %s in place of search term: `https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%s` keyword (optional): (put something here if you would like) then change default to the one you just made. Edit: forgot to add to change default in librewolf steps. --- ## Post 60 by @TheDoc — 2026-05-31T18:47:21Z > [@ParkerS](#): > > I am really, really bad at remembering keyboard shortcuts. In that case, it might be easiest to stick to either [DuckDuckGo Bangs](https://duckduckgo.com/bangs) or [Brave Search Bangs](https://search.brave.com/bangs) depending on whether you prefer DuckDuckGo or Brave Search. It adds an extra website for you to load as the query must first go through DuckDuckGo/Brave so if you’d rather add search engines directly to Firefox you can follow this guide: > Most search engines follow the standard URL format mentioned in the guide, but if that doesn’t work you can try adding a search engine using [Mycroft](https://mycroftproject.com/). --- ## Post 61 by @brn — 2026-05-31T19:29:08Z On that note, Kagi and Uruky also support custom bangs and a MIT-licensed list: [GitHub - kagisearch/bangs: Repository of bangs used by Kagi Search · GitHub](https://github.com/kagisearch/bangs) Ecosia also supports a few bangs: [Search shortcuts - Ecosia Help Center](https://support.ecosia.org/article/22-shortcuts) --- ## Post 62 by @JojoYou — 2026-05-31T20:56:31Z On that note, > [@TheDoc](#): > > It adds an extra website for you to load There was a nice idea by YouTuber name Theo. There is a way for a web search engine to make it so that during a Bang, you don’t actually have to load the search engine website which then redirects you, but you get redirected directly