Best Google Alternatives in 2026: 10 Search and News Options Compared

DuckDuckGo is the alternative most people try first, and for good reason. It looks and works much like Google, it is free, and it does not tie your searches to a profile. Its help pages explain that requests to partners are routed through its own servers, so those partners do not see identifiers about you.

The honest catch is where results come from. DuckDuckGo says its traditional links and images come largely from Bing, supplemented by its own crawler and sources such as Wikipedia for instant answers. If you dislike Bing's results, DuckDuckGo will feel similar. For most everyday searches, though, it is the smoothest switch on this list.

If you want results that feel closest to Google without using Google, Bing is it. It has its own large index, which several other engines on this list rely on, and its image and video search are good.

Bing also pays you a little. Microsoft Rewards gives 3 points per qualifying search, with a daily cap of 5, 10 or 20 searches depending on your level, and points can be redeemed for gift cards or donations. Bing is still run by a big tech company that uses data for advertising, so pick it for convenience, not privacy.

Brave Search stands out because it does not borrow its main results from Google or Bing. Brave says it operates a fully independent index, so it would keep working even if a big provider cut it off. That independence also means you sometimes get different, less SEO-gamed results.

It is ad supported, with what Brave calls privacy-first ads, and users who want no ads can buy Brave Search Premium inside the Brave browser. Brave's help page did not show a price when we checked. There is an optional setting that checks Google as a fallback for some queries, which you can turn off if you want to avoid Google entirely.

Startpage launched in the Netherlands in 2006 and calls itself the world's first private search engine. Its "How Startpage Works" page explains the setup: a first layer of servers strips your IP address, a second layer calls its search result providers, and queries are never stored in its logs.

The feature people love is Anonymous View. Click it next to any result and the website opens through Startpage's proxy, which hides your IP from that site. The trade-off is that the first results above the web listings are ads, though Startpage says they are based on your search term, not your history.

Ecosia turns your searches into ad revenue and spends its profits on climate projects, mostly tree planting with more than 900 native species. Its homepage counter showed 257,572,127 trees planted and over 104 million euros dedicated to climate action when we checked, and it says about 20 million people use it.

What makes Ecosia credible is transparency: it publishes financial reports every month. It also says it collects only the data it needs. The catch is that it is still an ad-funded engine built on partner results, so the reason to switch is mostly the mission rather than better answers.

Kagi flips the business model. You pay a subscription, so there are no ads and no reason to track you. Its pricing page lists a free trial with 100 searches, Starter at $5 per month for 300 searches, Professional at $10 per month for unlimited searches, and Ultimate at $25 per month with its most advanced AI assistant. Annual billing is 10% off.

It suits heavy searchers who are tired of sponsored results and content farms. You can lower or block domains you never want to see, which slowly makes results feel personal in a good way. Most people use more than 300 searches a month, so budget for Professional if you switch fully.

Qwant is a French search engine whose pitch is that you are the user, not the product. Its about page says it does not store your search history by default and does not store or sell your personal data. It also now offers AI-generated answers and page summaries, plus a browser extension and mobile app.

Read the fine print: Qwant says some advanced, optional features require sharing certain data with partners. For US users, results are fine for general topics but can be weaker for local American searches. It is a good pick if you want a European company outside the US tech giants.

Mojeek is the underdog. It is a small UK company that built its own crawler and index from the ground up, and it says the index passed 9 billion pages in 2025. It has offered search without tracking for more than 15 years.

Because its index is independent, Mojeek often surfaces small personal sites and forums that bigger engines bury. The downside is coverage: for obscure or very new pages, it may simply not have them yet. Many people keep Mojeek as a second engine for research rather than their only one.

Perplexity is less a search engine and more an answer engine. You ask a question, it searches the web and writes a summary with numbered citations, and you can ask follow-ups in the same thread. For questions like comparing two products or explaining a topic, that can save a lot of clicking.

The paid Pro tier adds more advanced models and higher limits, and its price is on Perplexity's site. Treat its answers as a starting point. AI summaries can misread a source, so open the citations for anything involving money, health or legal decisions.

If what you want is an alternative to Google News, Ground News is our pick. It groups articles about the same event and shows how left, center and right outlets cover it, so you see the full spread rather than one algorithm's selection.

You can read for free, and its subscription page lists the Vantage plan at $8.33 per month billed annually, which adds Blindspot analysis, a global coverage map, unlimited saved stories, ownership and funding information and a personal news bias dashboard. It is a reading tool, not a web search engine, so pair it with one of the options above.