A private search engine lets you navigate the web without leaving a digital trail. Unlike mainstream options that quietly log your queries, track your clicks and build profiles for advertisers, these tools are designed to keep your activity to yourself.
In an era where nearly every online action is monitored, the appeal of a more anonymous, low-surveillance internet experience is growing. According to Pew Research, 73 percent of Americans feel they have little control over how companies use their data – let alone understand how it’s being used — and 85 percent have taken steps to protect their privacy, such as adjusting settings, deleting histories or using specific tools.
Private search engines don’t promise total anonymity, but they do offer a break from the constant data collection baked into most of the internet. Increasingly, they’re being seen not just as niche tools for a select few, but as essential for users seeking more privacy online.
Private Search Engines to Know
- DuckDuckGo
- Startpage
- Brave Search
- Qwant
- Ecosia
- Mojeek
- Presearch
- MetaGer
- Searx/SearxNG
- Swisscows
Top Private Search Engines
DuckDuckGo is a U.S.-based, privacy-focused search engine that never logs or profiles users. It pulls results from around 400 sources — including Bing, Yahoo and its own “DuckDuckBot” crawler — and emphasizes features like instant answers and tracker protections. Its “!bang” shortcuts let users quickly search other sites directly without leaving DuckDuckGo, while enabling anonymous access through its Tor hidden service. With no personalized ads, it’s simple, consistent and widely trusted.
Startpage is a Dutch metasearch engine that strips users’ IP and personal data before querying Google or Bing, acting as a private proxy. It never logs searches and, for extra privacy, provides an “Anonymous View” feature that opens results through a separate browsing layer to further prevent tracking.
Brave Search runs on its own independent index that doesn't rely on Google or Bing, which is kept “intentionally smaller” in order to cut out spam and low-quality content. By default, it doesn’t collect user data such as IP addresses, though users can opt in to anonymous usage data sharing through the Web Discovery Project. When it graduated from its beta testing phase in 2022, it received 2.5 billion queries.
Qwant is a privacy-first French search engine that builds its own index and supplements results with Bing. This trackerless service avoids targeted ads, does not resell users’ personal data or display bias in the search results. With regional values around digital sovereignty and independent infrastructure built in, Qwant positions itself as a European alternative to dominant U.S.-based Big Tech platforms.
Ecosia is a non‑profit, Germany-based search engine that siphons Google, Yahoo, Bing and Wikipedia results through its non-tracking, anonymized platform. While it collects minimal, non-identifying user data for fraud prevention, it publishes financial reports to reinforce transparency and reduce surveillance — setting it apart from traditional ad-driven search engines. Self proclaimed as the “greenest search engine on the planet,” Ecosia invests most of its ad revenue reforestation efforts. To date, the company has planted more than 230 million trees.
MetaGer is a German non-profit metasearch engine operated by SUMA-EV (also known as the Association for Free Access to Knowledge) and the University of Hannover, combining transparency with privacy-first policies. It queries up to 50 engines — including Bing, Mojeek, Brave and so on — allowing custom blacklists, encrypted connections and even has a Tor hidden service for anonymous use.
Mojeek is a UK-based search engine that uses its own web crawler and index — one of the rare, truly independent privacy engines. It never tracks or personalizes results, delivering unbiased and consistent search outcomes across users.
Headquartered in Switzerland, Swisscows uses semantic data recognition from its own index of algorithms to solve queries faster. It’s a family-friendly brand that only hosts child-safe content, excluding explicit results entirely. It does not share data or store queries, and even runs on a “Swiss Fort Knox” underground data center.
Kagi is a premium, ad-free search engine that allows users to tailor their results with custom search filters called “lenses,” upvote/downvote tools and AI-generated summaries. It uses its own crawler, Teclis, to gather results, doesn’t log user activity and requires a subscription after 100 free searches. As of now, the service has more than 53,000 registered members.
YaCy is a decentralized, peer-to-peer search engine where each user runs their own node and index. Searches are distributed across the network, so there’s no central server collecting data. The platform is open-source and can be customized for public or private networks.
Oscobo is a UK-based search engine that doesn’t store personal data or search histories. It uses Bing and its own index to deliver results and encrypts all searches. It serves non-targeted ads based only on the search terms.
SearxXNG is a free, open‑source metasearch engine that aggregates results from more than 240 search services. Users can self‑host or use public servers like normal without being tracked with optional scripts and cookies. Each setup may use different sources and display formats, depending on who’s hosting it; however, all versions are built to avoid logging or profiling, offering greater privacy through a decentralized model.
BoardReader is a free search engine that focuses on indexing online message boards, bulletin boards, discussion forums and other community-driven platforms. It aggregates content from multiple sources into a single search interface, with filtering options by date and forum category. The service does not track user queries and is designed for discovering conversations across the social web.
U.S.-based search engine Gibiru sources results from Google without the tracking layers typically used for personalization or advertising. Launched in 2009, it offers both a standard search mode and an uncensored mode that removes certain content filters to provide broader access to information. Search queries are not stored long-term, and the platform avoids IP logging and cookie tracking to maintain user anonymity.
Disconnect works as a proxy between the user and major search engines like Bing or Yahoo. Part open-source browser and part mobile app, it strips identifying information before passing the query along without saving search histories, and was once the default search tool for the Tor browser.
Presearch is a blockchain-based search engine that rewards active users with cryptocurrency tokens for searching, running nodes and referring others to the site. It pulls results from multiple sources — including its own growing index — without tracking searches. Operated by a decentralized network of community-run nodes, Presearch also offers a staking-based advertising model and allows user contributions to its open-source infrastructure.
Lukol is a proxy search engine that delivers Google results while hiding the user’s IP address. It claims to wipe search history shortly after a query is submitted and maintains a simple, ad-supported interface. It filters certain explicit results by default; but its true anonymity has been contested, as some users note it stores cookies to serve personalized content while sharing user data.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is incognito mode 100 percent private?
No, incognito mode is not 100 percent private. While it’s designed to prevent your browser from saving local activity, it still allows websites, internet providers and network administrators to track your activity.
Is there a totally private browser?
Unfortunately, there is no browser that offers total privacy, but some — like the Tor Browser or Brave — provide stronger protections by using a combination of online anonymity-enhancing techniques, such as blocking trackers, encrypting data and limiting what information is collected.
