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 6
Our pick
Qwant
Privacy focused search engine from France
Qwant is a search engine from France that does not store or sell data about the people using it. Results come from the Bing index mixed with an index Qwant builds itself, so the service does not depend on Google. There is also a separate search engine for children.
FranceEU hostedFree plan
Ecosia
Search engine from Germany that funds conservation
GermanyFree plan♻
Mojeek
Independent search engine from the United Kingdom
United KingdomFree plan
GOOD
Non-profit search engine from Germany
GermanyEU hosted♻
swisscows
Private search engine from Switzerland
SwitzerlandEFTA hostedFree plan
metaGer
German metasearch engine run by a non-profit
GermanyEU hosted♻Questions
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.