LeakNixPrivate Search Engines, Compared Honestly
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If you want the short answer: DuckDuckGo if you want zero friction, Brave Search if you want an engine that runs its own index, Startpage if you want Google’s results without Google’s profile of you, and Kagi if you are willing to pay for search that has no advertiser in the room at all. Each carries a caveat that the marketing leaves out, and those are below.
Also below: two settings that do more for your privacy than switching engines, and why none of this helps with data that has already leaked.
What “private” means here, and what it does not
What a private engine does
It does not tie your queries to an account or a persistent identifier, and it does not build an advertising profile from them. Google, when you are signed in, stores every search under your name by default and uses it to pick ads and shape later results. A private engine skips that step. Your search for a medical symptom does not follow you around the web for a month.
What it does not do
It does not hide your IP address from the sites you click through to. It does not stop those sites running Google Analytics or Meta’s pixel. It does not hide from your internet provider which domains you visit. And your query still travels to the engine’s servers, so you are trusting the operator’s policy, not a technical guarantee. Private search is a real improvement in one specific place. It is not anonymity.
Where the results actually come from
This is the part most comparison pages skip, and it matters more than the privacy policy. Building a web index is expensive, so most “alternative” engines buy results from Bing or Google and put a private front end on them.
- DuckDuckGo gets the bulk of its web results from Bing, supplemented by its own crawler and hundreds of direct sources for instant answers. When Bing has an outage or changes its ranking, DuckDuckGo changes with it.
- Brave Search runs its own index and has served results from it without falling back to Bing since 2023. That makes it one of very few genuinely independent engines. It also means results for obscure queries can be thinner than Google’s.
- Startpage pays Google for results and strips your IP address and identifiers before forwarding the query. You get Google’s ranking; Google gets a query from Startpage, not from you.
- Kagi combines its own indexes with results bought from Google and other providers, then ranks them without ads. Because you pay, the incentive to profile you is absent rather than restrained by policy.
The four worth considering
DuckDuckGo
Free
DuckDuckGo is the default answer, and for most people it is the right one. It is free, it needs no account, and switching to it takes one setting in any browser. It makes money from ads bought through Microsoft's ad network, keyed to the search term rather than to you. Worth knowing: in 2022 a researcher found the DuckDuckGo browser was allowing some Microsoft trackers on third-party pages because of that search partnership. The company changed the browser to block them, but it was a reminder that 'private' has a business model behind it. The search engine itself was not implicated.
- No account, no query history tied to you
- Results mainly from Bing plus its own crawler
- Ads keyed to the search term, not a profile
- Browser and extensions available, not required
Brave Search
Free with ads. Paid ad-free tier available
Brave Search is the choice if independence from Google and Microsoft matters to you. It runs on its own index, which is rare, and the results are good for mainstream queries and sometimes patchy for niche ones. It is free with ads by default and has a paid ad-free tier. You do not need the Brave browser to use it; it works in any browser like any other search engine. The 'Goggles' feature lets you apply public re-ranking rules, for example boosting small independent sites, which no other engine offers.
- Own index, no reliance on Bing or Google
- Works in any browser
- Goggles for custom re-ranking
- Paid tier removes ads
Startpage
Free
Startpage is the answer for people who want Google's results and nothing else will do. It proxies your query to Google with the identifying parts removed. Its Anonymous View feature goes further and loads the page you click through Startpage's servers, so the destination site sees Startpage's IP address rather than yours. One thing to weigh: since 2019 Startpage has been majority owned by System1, a US advertising technology company. Startpage says its privacy policy did not change and there is no evidence it did, but it is a fact you should know before trusting the brand on privacy grounds.
- Google results, with your identifiers stripped
- Anonymous View proxies the pages you open
- No account needed
- Owned by System1, an ad-tech company, since 2019
Kagi
$5/month for 300 searches, $10/month unlimited
Kagi is the only one here you pay for, and that is the point. There are no ads, so there is nobody to profile you for. Results are consistently good, it lets you block or boost specific domains permanently, and it has become the engine a lot of technical people quietly switched to. The trade-off is that you are logged in, so Kagi knows who you are as a customer; you are trusting its statement that queries are not stored against your account. If you run fewer than 300 searches a month the cheap tier covers it.
- No ads and no ad-driven ranking
- Block or boost domains permanently
- Own indexes plus purchased results, re-ranked
- Requires an account, so it is trust, not anonymity
Two settings that matter more than which engine you pick
1. Turn off Google’s search history
Most of the harm in Google search is the profile, and you can switch that off without leaving Google. In your Google account, under Data and privacy, the setting is called Web & App Activity. Pause it, or set auto-delete to three months. Google still sees each query as it happens, but it stops accumulating years of them under your name. If you do only one thing from this page, do this.
2. Turn off address bar suggestions
Every browser sends what you type in the address bar to the default search engine as you type it, to offer suggestions. That means half-typed queries and URLs you never submitted reach the engine anyway. Chrome calls the setting “Autocomplete searches and URLs”; Firefox and Safari have equivalents under search settings. Switching to a private engine and leaving this on sends that engine more than you think; leaving Google and turning it off sends Google less.
Private search does nothing for data that has already leaked
Search privacy is about the future: what gets collected from here on. It has no effect on what is already sitting in breach databases under your email address, which for most people who have been online since 2010 is quite a lot. A private engine will not remove your password from the LinkedIn dump or your phone number from the Facebook one.
That is a separate check, and a quicker one. Look up your email address and see which breaches hold it and what leaked. If you want the background on where that data comes from, this explains where leaked data ends up.
Questions people ask
Are the results worse than Google?
For Startpage, no, they are Google’s. For DuckDuckGo they are Bing’s, which is fine for most things and weaker for local results and very recent news. Brave and Kagi are their own thing: usually as good, occasionally better because there is less spam, sometimes missing a long-tail page Google would find. Try one for a week with a fallback bookmarked and you will know.
Is Incognito or Private Browsing the same as private search?
No. Incognito stops the browser saving history and cookies on your own machine. The search engine still receives your query, your IP address, and, if you sign in during the session, your identity. It protects you from the next person who uses the laptop, not from the search engine.
Do I still need a VPN?
A VPN solves a different problem: it hides your IP address from the sites you visit and hides the sites you visit from your network. If that is what you want, a VPN plus a private engine covers both ends. If you only want to stop your searches being profiled, the engine alone does it. Our VPN comparison goes into when one is worth paying for.
Then check the past, not just the future
Changing your search engine takes a minute. Finding out what has already leaked under your email takes about the same.
Check My Email for Leaks