9 Best Private Search Engines of 2026

DuckDuckGo is the easiest private search engine to adopt because it looks and behaves like a mainstream engine and costs nothing. Its help pages say search, the browser extensions and the DuckDuckGo Private Browser are all free, and that requests to result partners are proxied through its own servers, so partners never see your IP address. Most traditional links come from Bing, topped up by DuckDuckBot and Instant Answers from sources such as Wikipedia and Sportradar. The company reports 3 billion monthly searches and 9 million monthly app downloads. The browser, on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android, blocks cookie pop-ups and invasive ads. The optional Plus subscription costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year and adds a VPN, advanced Duck.ai models, Personal Information Removal and Identity Theft Restoration; Pro is $19.99 a month. The trade-off is reliance on Bing for most links and ads on the results page.

Brave Search stands out because it runs on its own index instead of renting results from Bing or Google, which most privacy engines do. Brave states that it does not profile users and does not collect the personal data it would need to share or sell. The results page combines classic links with Ask Brave, an AI answer mode that adds summaries, supporting videos and sites, and follow-up questions. Goggles let you apply community-written ranking rules, and a Search API serves developers building their own search or AI products. Searching is free in any major browser at search.brave.com. Search Premium removes the ads for $3.00 a month or $29.99 a year, the cheapest paid tier on this list, but Brave's help center says it is exclusively available on the Brave browser. The help center also documents Google fallback mixing, so not every result is purely from Brave's index.

Startpage says it launched the world's first private search engine in the Netherlands in 2006, and its main pitch is simple: no personal data is stored, and results are not profiled to you. Its distinguishing feature is Anonymous View. Click "Visit in Anonymous View" under any result and the page opens through Startpage over HTTPS, so the site you visit does not see your IP address, cookies or a device fingerprint. Startpage describes it as acting like a VPN, without an account or fees. That covers a gap most private engines leave open, since they protect the search but not the click. Startpage also offers a mobile browser and a browser extension. The limits are practical: its FAQ notes you may see more cookie or location notices in Anonymous View. Startpage is free, and its FAQ explains how it makes money without selling your data.

Kagi is the only engine here that charges for search itself, and that is the point: it has no ads and says it is fully funded by its users. The Trial covers 100 searches and 100 Assistant interactions. Starter costs $5 a month plus tax for 300 searches, Professional costs $10 for unlimited searches with Kagi Summarize, and Ultimate costs $25 and adds premium AI models and Research mode in the Kagi Assistant. Annual billing takes 10% off, and Kagi's fair pricing policy credits you for any month you do not use. Features go well beyond the basics: lenses narrow results to a topic, personalized results and filters shape what you see, and bangs jump to other sites. For anonymity, Kagi supports Privacy Pass and access over Tor, because a paid account is otherwise tied to your billing details. The main drawback is cost: Kagi is the most expensive option here, and Starter's 300-search cap runs out quickly.

Ecosia is a free search engine run as a social business: its help center says it dedicates 100% of its profits to climate action, mainly tree planting, and it publishes financial reports on its blog. Revenue comes from ads delivered through Google AdSense and the Microsoft Advertising network, labelled as "Ad" or "Sponsored". Results come from partner providers, and Ecosia is moving to EUSP, a European index it says supports digital sovereignty; EUSP results launched in France and went live in Germany in July 2026. In July 2026 Ecosia also added a setting that turns off all AI search features in a few seconds. The Ecosia Browser runs on desktop, iOS and Android and includes private browsing, which Ecosia itself says protects you only from other people on the same device. Pick Ecosia for its climate model; if privacy is the main goal, DuckDuckGo, Brave Search or Startpage document stronger protections.

Qwant is a French search engine hosted in Europe, and its pitch is that you are the user, not the product. By default it does not store your search history and does not sell personal data. Qwant has added AI answers to the results page and a Summary feature that condenses a web page in one click; both are free and unlimited once you create a Qwant account. Qwant is upfront that these optional advanced features require sharing some data with partners, and says you can refuse that sharing when you sign up. Browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari make it your default engine, and Android and iOS apps are available. Qwant Junior offers a version for children. It suits European users who want a local alternative, though it publishes fewer power-user controls than Kagi or Brave Search.

Mojeek is one of the few engines here with its own crawler and index built from scratch, which passed 9 billion pages in 2025. The UK company says it has provided independent search without tracking for over 15 years, and its results are not borrowed from Bing or Google. Recent additions include Search Summary and Semantic Search in 2024, a beta SafeSearch and cookieless preferences, so settings can be saved without cookies. Focus lets you build a search across a chosen set of sites. Mojeek runs on renewable energy at what it calls the UK's greenest data centre. Searching is free. Developers can buy its Search API on pay-as-you-go pricing starting at £2 per 1,000 requests, with no minimum commitment. The trade-off for independence is coverage: a 9-billion-page index is smaller than the major engines, so very niche searches may return fewer results.

SearXNG is not a company but an open-source project: a free metasearch engine that queries up to 260 search services and merges the results, without tracking or profiling users. You can use one of about 70 maintained public instances listed on searx.space, or install your own with a container or install script if you do not want to trust anyone else. JavaScript and cookies are optional, the interface has 58 translations, and SearXNG can be used over Tor. Because it aggregates, you choose which engines feed results, from general web engines to sources such as arXiv, PubMed and GitHub. That flexibility comes with effort. Public instances differ in speed and uptime, and its own docs include guidance on answering CAPTCHAs from a server's IP, a sign that upstream engines can push back. For non-technical users, a hosted engine is simpler.

Swisscows is a Swiss search engine that says it does not store data, anonymizes all queries and builds no user profiles. Its main difference is that it is family-friendly by design: pornographic and sexual content is neither indexed nor displayed, which makes it a practical default for children and schools. Swisscows says its results rely on its own index, and it offers an anonymous preview window for viewing results. Search is free. Swisscows Pro is a paid, ad-free version that also lets you choose which sources appear, for example hiding TikTok and Instagram and highlighting scientific articles. The company also sells Swisscows.email, EdelCloud storage and Swisscows.VPN, which starts from 7.00 CHF a month and covers up to three devices. Prices are shown in CHF and EUR here, so we could not confirm a USD figure for Pro. The always-on filter is the trade-off: adults may find some legitimate results missing.