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The Best Private Search Engines: A 2025 Showdown

Your search history is a deeply personal and revealing log of your thoughts, curiosities, and concerns. When you use a search engine like Google, you’re not just finding information; you’re also providing it. Every query is logged, linked to your account, and used to build an incredibly detailed profile for targeted advertising.

But what if you could search the web without being watched?

That’s the promise of private search engines. These services are designed to deliver high-quality search results without tracking your activity, storing your personal information, or creating a profile about you. Switching your default search engine is one of the easiest and most impactful changes you can make for your digital privacy.

In this guide, we’ll compare the best private search engines of 2025 to help you choose the best one for your needs.

How We Evaluated Them

We’re judging these search engines on four key criteria:

  1. Privacy Policy: How strong are their privacy promises? Do they log IP addresses or other identifying data?
  2. Search Results Quality: How relevant and accurate are the results compared to mainstream engines?
  3. User Experience: Is the interface clean and easy to use? Does it offer useful features?
  4. Business Model: How do they make money? Is their revenue model aligned with user privacy?

1. DuckDuckGo: The Popular All-Rounder

DuckDuckGo is the most well-known private search engine, and for many, it’s the default choice for de-Googling their searches.

  • Privacy Policy: Excellent. DuckDuckGo’s core promise is that it does not collect or share any personal information. It doesn’t store your IP address or log your search queries in a personally identifiable way. It uses aggregate, non-personal data to improve results, such as correcting misspellings.
  • Search Results Quality: Very good. DuckDuckGo gets its results from over 400 sources, including its own web crawler (DuckDuckBot) and Microsoft Bing. For most queries, the results are highly relevant and comparable to what you’d find on a mainstream engine. It also offers “!Bangs,” which are shortcuts that let you search directly on other sites (e.g., !w privacy searches Wikipedia for “privacy”).
  • User Experience: Clean and customizable. The interface is familiar and intuitive. It offers features like infinite scroll, themes, and detailed settings to tailor the experience.
  • Business Model: DuckDuckGo makes money in two ways:
    1. Private Ads: It shows ads from the Microsoft ad network based on your search query itself, not on a profile of you. If you search for “car,” you see car ads. This is non-tracking advertising.
    2. Affiliate Links: It uses affiliate links with partners like Amazon and eBay, but these are also implemented in a way that does not share personal information.

Best For: Most users. DuckDuckGo offers the best balance of privacy, performance, and user-friendly features. It’s the easiest and most effective replacement for Google for the vast majority of people.

2. Startpage: Google Results, Total Privacy

What if you love the quality of Google’s search results but hate the tracking? That’s where Startpage comes in.

  • Privacy Policy: Excellent. Based in the Netherlands (which has strong privacy laws), Startpage’s model is simple: it acts as a private middleman between you and Google. It submits your query to Google anonymously and returns the results to you. Google sees the search request coming from Startpage’s servers, not your IP address. Startpage itself keeps no logs of your searches.
  • Search Results Quality: Identical to Google. Since it pulls its results directly from Google, you get the same high-quality, relevant results you’re used to, including image and video searches.
  • User Experience: Minimalist and fast. The interface is very clean, resembling an older, less cluttered version of Google. Its standout feature is the “Anonymous View,” a proxy service that lets you visit websites from the search results without revealing your IP address to the site itself.
  • Business Model: Similar to DuckDuckGo, Startpage displays non-tracking, contextual ads based on your search term.

Best For: Users who want the power of Google’s search index without any of the privacy compromises. If you find DuckDuckGo’s results aren’t quite hitting the mark for a specific query, Startpage is the perfect alternative.

3. Brave Search: The Independent Challenger

Brave Search is a newer player from the makers of the privacy-focused Brave Browser. Its key differentiator is its ambition to build a truly independent search index.

  • Privacy Policy: Excellent. Brave Search does not track you, your queries, or your clicks.
  • Search Results Quality: Good and rapidly improving. Brave is building its own index from the ground up to reduce reliance on Bing and Google. For many queries, its results are already independent and highly relevant. For more obscure queries, it can anonymously blend in results from other providers. It also features “Discussions,” which can surface relevant conversations from forums like Reddit in the search results.
  • User Experience: Modern and feature-rich. The interface is clean and fast. It’s seamlessly integrated into the Brave Browser but can be used with any browser.
  • Business Model: Brave offers a premium, ad-free version and is also building a private advertising platform.

Best For: Users who want to support a truly independent alternative to Big Tech and break free from the Google/Bing duopoly. The quality is already impressive and is poised to become a top contender.

4. Mojeek: The True Independent Crawler

For the privacy purist, Mojeek is a fascinating option. Unlike most other private search engines that rely on Bing’s index, Mojeek has its own, much smaller, but completely independent web crawler and index.

  • Privacy Policy: The strictest of all. Mojeek has had a no-tracking policy since 2006 and claims to be the first to do so. It does not log any identifying information whatsoever.
  • Search Results Quality: Mixed. Because its index is smaller (over 3 billion pages), the results can sometimes be less comprehensive than its competitors for very specific or long-tail queries. However, it offers a truly different set of results, free from the bubble of Google or Bing.
  • User Experience: Simple and straightforward. The interface is no-frills, focusing purely on delivering search results.
  • Business Model: Currently funded by private investors, with a plan to introduce non-tracking ads in the future.

Best For: Privacy purists and researchers who want to see results from outside the mainstream search ecosystem and support a truly independent search technology.

Comparison Table

Conclusion: Which Private Search Engine is Right for You?

Making the switch to a private search engine is a simple act of digital hygiene with significant privacy benefits.

  • For the vast majority of users, DuckDuckGo is the best place to start. It offers a fantastic user experience and excellent privacy without sacrificing result quality.
  • If you find yourself missing Google’s results, Startpage is the perfect solution, giving you the best of both worlds.
  • If you’re committed to supporting an independent web, Brave Search is an exciting and rapidly growing alternative that’s already a powerful daily driver.

The best part is that you don’t have to choose just one. Try setting one as your default for a week and see how it feels. You might be surprised at how little you miss—and how much privacy you gain.

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