Privacy Search Engines Ranked

re-ranking for accuracy. Rereading all privacy policies.
Tier 0 and 1: done. Tier 2 : next to be reevaluated.


┌── Tier 0: Maximum Privacy (Clearnet)
│   │
│   └── Marginalia Search (24h logs, no tracking, anti-commercial)
│       Specialized index, not for general web search
│       update: The best privacy policy. Weak clearnet index.
│
├── Tier 1: Total Independence & Control
│   │
│   └── SearxNG, Self-hosted (you control everything, meta-search)
│       update: Review Preferences before use. Weak index
│
├── Tier 2: Strong Independent Commercial
│   │
│   └── Brave Search (own index, transparent Google fallback)
│       Best privacy/practicality balance for daily use
│
├── Tier 2.5: European Independent
│   │
│   ├── Qwant (EU-based, own index, GDPR-focused)
│   │
│   └── Murena Find (Qwant Proxy)
│
├── Tier 4: Privacy Proxies (dependency on surveillance providers)
│   │
│   ├── Startpage (Google proxy, no tracking)
│   │
│   └── DuckDuckGo (Bing + own index, no tracking)
│
├── Tier 5: Privacy-Wrapped Ad Partners
│   │
│   ├── Swisscows (Microsoft Bing ads, Swiss wrapper)
│   │   Obfuscated IP to Microsoft, 60-day logs,
│   │   jurisdictional/technical obscurantism
│   │
│   └── Ecosia (Google + Microsoft ads, EU wrapper)
│       Full IP & query to partners, 7-day retention,
│       emotional appeals feel like misdirection
│
└── Tier null: Commercial & State Surveillance
    │
    ├── Google (Most comprehensive tracking ecosystem)
    │
    ├── Bing (Same model as Google)
    │
    ├── Yandex (Russian jurisdiction, SORM compliance)
    │
    └── Yahoo (Bing-powered + Verizon tracking)


    Other: Tor network (.onion) search engine
    │
    └── Ahmia (Tor network search, academic, no IP storage)
        "Anonymous" search on anonymous network 
        update: search terms saved (the issue)
 


If there's a revenue model dependency (Bing, Google or other
surveillance ecosystem), follow the money to understand the
privacy compromises.

Assume that data shared with researchers, ad partners, etal...
means that data is shared with everyone.

Recommendations: none yet. Redoing entire page (09dec2025)

This is a first draft.

04 Dec 2025 : Initial upload (linked via blog only)
09 Dec 2025 : started review

Reviewing. It was previously Tier 1 but does not belong there

│   │
│   └── Mojeek (100% own index, no partnerships)
│       Retains lots of data indefinitely
        Re privacy: I'm not comfortable with the amount of data it holds on to