Replaces Yandex Search
European alternatives to Yandex Search
European search engines with their own indexes
Browse the category: Search engines · Web browsers
Yandex Search is the search engine run by the Russian company Yandex. It maintains its own web index, is strongest on Russian language content, and offers the usual web, image and news search alongside maps and other services attached to the same account. In its home market it is one of the main ways people find things online.
Search queries say a great deal about a person, and the jurisdiction of the company answering them decides who can demand the logs later. For users in Europe there is little reason to route that traffic outside the EU or EFTA. A European alternative to Yandex Search is straightforward to adopt. Qwant and Ecosia are general purpose engines, Mojeek maintains its own web index, and swisscows is a further European option.
European options
| service | Country | Hosting | Open source | Free plan | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Qwant |
 France |
EU hosted | — | ✓ | EU controlled |
 Ecosia |
 Germany |
— | ✓ | EU controlled | |
 metaGer |
Germany |
EU hosted | — | — | EU controlled |
Qwant
Privacy focused search engine from France
Qwant is a search engine from France that says it does not store or sell user search data. It uses its own crawling and relies partly on Staan, the European index co-developed with Ecosia, while third-party indexing services including Microsoft Bing still supplement some results. There is also a separate search engine for children.
FranceEU hostedFree planEU controlled
Ecosia
Search engine from Germany that funds conservation
GermanyFree plan♻EU controlled
metaGer
German metasearch engine run by a non-profit
GermanyEU hosted♻EU controlledServices without verified European control
Kept here for transparency, but excluded from the European options and totals. How we classify services →
Mojeek
Independent search engine from the United Kingdom
United KingdomFree plan Ownership reviewed, controller unresolved
GOOD
Non-profit search engine from Germany
GermanyEU hosted♻ Ownership reviewed, controller unresolved
swisscows
Private search engine from Switzerland
SwitzerlandEFTA hostedFree plan Ownership reviewed, controller unresolvedQuestions
Do European engines handle languages other than English?
Qwant and Ecosia serve users across Europe and cover the major European languages. Coverage of any specific language is worth testing with the queries you actually run.
Which of these runs an independent index?
Mojeek crawls the web and maintains its own index rather than relying on a partner. metaGer takes the opposite approach and merges results from several sources.
Can I use one of these on my phone?
All of them work in a mobile browser, and most can be set as the default search engine in the browser settings. Ecosia and Qwant also offer their own mobile apps.