There is no single “most private” engine, because the phrase bundles together things that come apart under inspection. This page separates them: who owns the index answering your query, and what each vendor documents about its AI features. 4 of 7 engines below have a vendor source for those claims; the others are marked unverified rather than filled in.
Almost every “best private search engine” list produces a single ordered ranking. That only works if the thing being measured is one-dimensional, and it is not. At least three independent questions get compressed into that one number:
Those pull in different directions, which is why the honest output is a table rather than a leaderboard. The engine with the most independent index is not the one with the best coverage; the one with the clearest no-AI documentation is not the most independent.
| Engine | Index | Whose index | Documented AI control | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mojeek | Own index | Its own | No vendor document on AI controls was located for this review, so no AI claim is made here. | Vendor doc |
| Brave Search | Own index | Its own | States that "advanced machine learning models are used broadly and deeply across most parts of the technology stack". A parameter suppresses the AI summary surface only. | Vendor doc |
| DuckDuckGo | Mixed | Mostly Bing, plus its own crawler | Publishes a No-AI host and states search there works the same "except all AI features are turned off and AI-generated images are filtered out". | Vendor doc |
| Own index | Its own | States AI Overviews "are a core Google Search feature" and that "features cannot be turned off". Its Web filter "displays only text-based links without features like AI Overviews". | Vendor doc | |
| Startpage | Unverified | Not verified for this review | Not verified for this review. | None located |
| Qwant | Unverified | Not verified for this review | Not verified for this review. | None located |
| Presearch | Resold | Multiple third-party providers | Not verified for this review. | None located |
Ordered by index independence, not by preference. That ordering is a fact about who runs the crawler; it is not a claim that the top row is the best engine for you.
Index: States its technology is "created from the ground up", including its own crawler and "billion scale indexing".
AI: No vendor document on AI controls was located for this review, so no AI claim is made here.
Source read 2026-07-25: About Mojeek
Index: Runs an independent index rather than reselling another engine’s results.
AI: States that "advanced machine learning models are used broadly and deeply across most parts of the technology stack". A parameter suppresses the AI summary surface only.
Source read 2026-07-25: Brave Search Help — AI in Brave Search
Index: States it "largely source[s] from Bing" for links and images while maintaining "our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes".
AI: Publishes a No-AI host and states search there works the same "except all AI features are turned off and AI-generated images are filtered out".
Source read 2026-07-25: DuckDuckGo Help — where results come from
Index: The largest index of the group, served end to end by Google.
AI: States AI Overviews "are a core Google Search feature" and that "features cannot be turned off". Its Web filter "displays only text-based links without features like AI Overviews".
Source read 2026-07-25: Google Search Help — AI Overviews and the Web filter
Index: startpage.com refused automated requests on the review date, so no vendor statement could be retrieved and none is paraphrased here.
AI: Not verified for this review.
No vendor source cited for this engine. Nothing here should be read as a claim about it either way.
Index: No vendor statement on result sourcing was retrieved for this review.
AI: Not verified for this review.
No vendor source cited for this engine. Nothing here should be read as a claim about it either way.
Index: Draws on several providers per query, so consecutive searches may not be answered by the same source.
AI: Not verified for this review.
No vendor source cited for this engine. Nothing here should be read as a claim about it either way.
This is what most people mean by private search, and it is the axis where switching genuinely changes something. DuckDuckGo is the easiest switch: widely supported in browser settings, familiar, and designed around not building a search profile. Its tradeoff is coverage on narrow technical and local queries — see DuckDuckGo vs Google for where that shows up.
A much smaller field, because running a web-scale crawler is expensive and few do. Mojeek is the clearest case: it documents its own crawler and index rather than reselling results. Brave also runs its own index. Expect narrower coverage from any independent index and keep a fallback for obscure queries — that is the honest cost of independence, not a defect.
Then privacy rankings are the wrong tool entirely, and you should read search engines without AI instead. Short version: DuckDuckGo publishes a No-AI host, and Google's Web filter shows links without AI Overviews while Google states the feature itself cannot be turned off.
Use Google's Web filter and accept that it is a per-search mode. Sending
udm=14 gets you there directly — what
udm=14 does and does not do covers why an undocumented parameter deserves
some caution.
Stating these plainly, because they are the claims that make comparison pages in this niche unreliable:
Search engines also change without notice, so treat everything above as accurate on 2026-07-25 and check the linked sources if a detail matters to a decision.