I've been uaing my own selfhosted searxng instance. Absolutely love it.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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Duck Duck works for me. I use the "Disable Ai" addon (libreoffice) to remove most of the useless stuff. I've also tried Ecosia, but the lack of option for chronological results is a big No for me.
I've use it, but sometime it goes offline. The main DuckDuck with the addon is good enough for now.
If you aren't paying for it, you are the product. I pay for Kagi and I am very happy with the results and tools they develop.
Lots of times you pay, but you are still the product.
I also use kagi when I need it, and have managed to stay on the free tier. DDG for everything else.
And even sometimes you don't pay and still aren't the product. See most FOSS stuff. The statement is just false.
I have a hard time justifying paying for it. it's a good search engine but I don't agree with their AI stance.
Can you elaborate?
I very much want to use KAGI but their basic tier isn't enough querying for me in any given month. I have to rephrase, or correct my own typos at least 300 times a month, in my searches.
Startpage has never been down for me, so idrk what the problem on ur end is.
You are doing business with google when using it though, and it's results have severely enshitified along with the rest since 2021. (They pay google.)
*you're supporting Google
StartPage or rather the companies behind it do business with Google, not yourself.
Which amounts to the same thing. I use startpage too for lack of an alternative, but it's not ideal. I want to do zero business with these silicon valley parasites.
Consider Brave Search. It is the only search engine with useful results I'm aware of that doesn't use the search index of Bing (Microsoft) or Google, but it is sadly also by an US-based company and not as privacy-friendly as StartPage afaik.
Thanks for the tip. We should make an open source search engine, and index.
Same. Been using for two years or more. Never had an issue except the settings cookie seems to expire monthly.
I get this page all the time idk why. I thought it was startpage's issue.
I get my connection blocked a lot by that search engine saying to many requests despite using it very little.
Are you sharing your IP address with other people? CGNAT or university network or something?
Currently using https://www.qwant.com/
It's French, they are trying to create an european search index together with german Ecosia.
+1
Search engine as it should be.
This is exciting to hear! Last I heard, Ecosia just wrapped Google's results. KAGI is pretty upfront about doing the same.
This will sound silly, but an absolute need-to-have for me is the ability to throw basic math problems into the search bar as a calculator.
I never reach for a calculator or spin up a separate app for it, or want to widget on my desktop.. instead, I just press the keyboard shortcut for a new tab in my browser and then just belt out whatever parentheticals I need.
This pretty much serves as the basis for my evaluating different search engines, if it won't handle the algebra for me, I have to move on.
Afaik qwant is using Bing where their own index fails.
You could set up a key combo for a calculator app all the same. And have some fancier calculator app open locally...
I absolutely could launch the calculator app by keyboard shortcut when I'm on a desktop. And I kept a calculator widget across an entire full screen in my Android phone's home menu, for many years.
These days, I really value the ability to just open a new tab, belt out my instructions, hit enter, and see the result though - - it is mostly things like calculating the total cost of buying something across a year, or calculating currency conversions, or estimating battery capacities and consumption rates.
In this regard, without wanting to buy into an entire AI ecosystem, I do require my search engines to do at least one function beyond mere searches: Pre-algebra.
searXNG
with a lot of "backends". I like how it aggregates the results from multiple engines, at least for my searches they turn out consistently more relevant when using any single search.
I have a Kagi subscription and very happy with it.
I know you mentioned having tried it but my experience with DDG has been pretty good and it's what I use (edit to add that I'm not doubting your experience with it has been poor and this isn't intended to sound flippant).
I see Kagi come up a lot. I don't trust engines like Kagi not to link my payment data with my search history, personally. They're a US company, so consider what that means in the current state of the world and privacy. I haven't deeply investigated the validity of it, but the Kagi CEO allegedly harassed a journalist (minor edit, a blogger) who had a critical take on their service, and supposedly they were founded as - you guessed it - an AI company.
And sure, DDG is a US company, too. But they don't really have anything personally identifying to link my searches back to me. I can accept the ads (though I have uBlock), which are only contextually targeted based on search keywords. I don't think I'd use their browser or extensions, which would have a much more privileged place in my "tech stack", but for search it does well enough.
You can completely decouple your payment data from your search history with Kagi, something no other search engine allows. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html
Ah, that's good information - thanks!
I'm having a hard time understanding how that works , especially if browser plugin generatesnthe tokens , wouldn't they just b able to look at IP addresses to match searches with payments?
Kagi has a free trial.
Brave is run by a POS.
You can try Kagi for free, no CC required.
after a similar path that you took, I now use Metager.org, a privacy respecting meta search engine. You pay for your search requests, but it's very, very cheap since it is run by a nonprofit (around a eurocent/search depending on settings). They integrate a lot of smaller search indexes, and you can choose to integrate braves and googles index if you wish. You can blacklist webpages too, and the source is FOSS.
Isn't there a new European thing?