HN Explorer

Ask HN: Best search engine alternatives to Google?

56 points by cowpig ↗ HN
I find Google amazing for some kinds of queries, such as directly answering simple factual questions or finding content within a defined domain.

However, for a lot of things it's quite bad. If I want to find a good website for some use-case (as opposed to directly finding information inside a page), or if I want anything where there might be a commercial interest in ~~lying~~ advertising to me, Google is truly awful.

It's also, obviously, very bad for privacy.

Surely there are a bunch of interesting new search engines popping up given the recent deep learning explosion? What interesting alternatives have you discovered?

50 comments

[ 33.6 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] thread
barbazoo
I switched over to https://kagi.com a while ago and never use Google search anymore.
privacyking
Didn't they have some controversy recently where they screwed over their initial users?
barbazoo
I didn't care much about that, seemed reasonable what they did.
raybb
Yes the changed pricing but then grandfathered people in later so didn't end up screwing people over.
tsuujin
I’m an initial user, and I don’t feel screwed over fwiw.

I always knew that the site was going to come with a cost, and that’s why I’m using kagi; I would rather that cost be money than invasive advertising ruining my search results.

I feel like they have been very transparent about pricing and their justifications.

snielson
Kagi is great. I've had to find some obscure things recently and it was fantastic. No ads, no irrelevant garbage designed to make money for the search engine. Instead my interests and that of kagi are aligned - find the best search result - and it is great.
carlosjobim
For years I would at times try different search engines when fed up with Google. Such as Duck Duck Go, Bing and others. They were always much worse than Google.

Kagi's search results are much better than anything else you can find right now. It was easy to just forget about Google.

levidos
Odd, I'm paying for Kagi but still find Google better
helph67
There are plenty of search engines that don't spy on you, here's a few... https://duckduckgo.com/ https://www.ecosia.org/ https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.startpage.com/
shortcake27
I can only speak to DDG but the quality of results are worse than Google. I still use it anyway as privacy outweighs accuracy for most of my searches.
Beached
interesting, I find results to much better than Google. I haven't used Google in about 2 years now, and I find myself appalled when I borrow someone's laptop to do a search online
jesterson
> There are plenty of search engines that don't spy on you

That's a very bold (and erroneous) statement when you put DDG in the list

cowpig
I think this is kind of an interesting project, though I suspect it's as bad or worse than google for privacy:

www.perplexity.ai

mattnewport
I've been paying for kagi for a while now and am pretty happy with it. Switched from DuckDuckGo.
xarvatium
Been using Brave Search since it was public, it's improved a lot since. I also really like Duckduckgo and I use it on mobile, but Brave Search indexes their own sites rather than being a meta search engine, like how ddg uses Bing results. Nothing wrong with meta search engines though, I just personally prefer the way Brave does it.
ChatGTP
I like DuckDuckGo but it seems so slow lately , maybe it’s my location but it’s punishing.
senko
Kagi user here, very happy with them so far. I honestly use maybe a third of their features (lens and boost/block are great ones that I'm too lazy/forgetful to use).

They also recently announced search AI (I think powered by Anthropic over their index) and API, which, as a developer, I also find useful.

Finally, the vision and priorities they communicate are something I agree with.

All this makes it a nobrainer to pay for their service.

sureglymop
SearxNG. Happy user of an instance someone is hosting near me that is fast and reliable.
newoldhead
100%. Private, no tracking, can index all the major search engines. You can even host your own relatively easily. This is the way.
jacooper
IMO brave is the best alternative search engine but it definitely show its limit with niche queries.
jerhewet
webcrawler.com

Going on four years now. Reminds me of how Google used to be, 15 years ago.

ForestCritter
wow, just tried this, been researching herbalism, holistic medicine and homestead style farming and this engine is to the point! This stuff has been systematically disapearing from other searches. Thank you
dsir
I've been using DuckDuckGo as my main search engine however I do find myself adding the "!g" bang a lot. It's hard to escape the google grasp.
michalf6
Yandex is pretty useful as a last resort for things banned elsewhere

also: https://search.marginalia.nu/

algas
I really liked marginalia when I first used it (when it was released) but it seems to have a little more cruft now. Not sure if that's other peoples experience too?
gaws
Yandex is useful for reverse image searching.
ranger207
I use DuckDuckGo, and contrary to other comments here I find the results far better than Google on the very rare occasions I have to use it
atraac
I've tried using DDG multiple times in the past and I've always disliked the results. But recently I gave it another go and I use it as my main driver now. I'd love for it to have a bit more tooling cause stuff like calculator or currency exchange is quirky and won't always show up but I'm really happy about the results, especially at work. Haven't had a need for Google in few months. It even finally correctly showing results local to me, relevant new political news etc. I noticed a big difference between now and last time I tried it(year or two ago).
mkbkn
I am surprised no one has mentioned Ecosia yet.

I am a not a developer, so my use case is different but Ecosia.org returns good results almost all the time. Of not, I would use StartPage.

dotcoma
Brave, DuckDuckGo, Kagi, Mojeek (UK), Qwant (France)
narrator
Yandex is the least censored. IMHO, it works like Google did in the 2000s. Yeah Russia bad, blah blah.
ForestCritter
I was using yandex fr the lack of censorship but have found some health and holistic things are no longer coming up since very recently. I've started using mojeek as an alternative since I am studying as an herbalist and need to get sites other than healthline and webmd.
narrator
Thanks for the tip. I usually search for "ivermectin" to see how biased a search engine is and mojeek did pretty well.
downboots
Is there a reliable offline alternative to search?
methou
Kagi's great, when it did not get good result, neither did google.

Only that you have to keep a mental counter on the usage.

carlosjobim
You don't need to do that. A search only costs a couple of cents after using all your supply.
SemioticStandrd
I was using Kagi, and while I paid for them for a good while, I switched to DDG because I just can’t afford to subscribe to so many things. It’s money well spent and I agree with and support their philosophy, but man, all these monthly things add up.
trelliscoded
you.com, drops you directly into a LLM response to your question, with search results on the right side.
stringtoint
I've been increasingly using Ecosia for a while. They use Bing under the hood.
odieldomanie
Kagi is pretty good, but as someone living in a 3rd world country, it is too expensive. They say 300 queries/month is enough for almost everyone, but I've almost reached that amount in just a few days. And few cents per query adds up when I do multiple searches per topic, times ten for currency weakness.

AI search engines like perplexity.ai are too slow, and I end up clicking the referenced links anyway.

Once my Kagi credits are used up, I'll go back to DDG, which has better results than google in my experience. Though reddit being gone makes it hard to tell rn.

ForestCritter
Give mojeek a try. It is keyword based, not query based ( they explain on their home page) and it works very nicely and there is no cost.