Brave Search

Long-term owners

Been a happy user for at least 1-2 years now. Its AI summaries are great

Jul 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• KagiA paid search engine people choose for cleaner results without ads or tracking, with domain blocking, customization and opt-in AI answers; critics object to its Yandex data and pricing.732recommend
• DuckDuckGoA free, privacy-focused search engine that many find good enough now that Google has declined, with options to turn off AI; critics find results weaker than Google's.286recommend
• SearXNGSelf-hosted metasearch engine that blends results from many engines without ads, tracking or AI summaries. Common caveat: upstream engines often rate limit or block it.76recommend
• StartpagePrivate search that gives anonymous access to Google results and is a popular fallback. Critics say results trail Google and it is owned by an advertising company.25recommend
• QwantRecommended as a European alternative to Google that sometimes gives better results, though critics say it omits results Google finds and copies Google's interface.22recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 111 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Thankfully Brave indexing is pretty good so it's had a measurable impact on the amount of search I actually put through Google.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Google steers Americans looking for health care into "junk insurance"”

2. Brave search is decent. Moat of the time the ai bubble at the top juat has the answer too

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Ask HN: What are the viable alternatives to DuckDuckGo?”

3. Brave wins because of the lack of slop from yahoo as well as the primary source results.

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “Apparently Google hates us now”

4. the AI answers are way more accurate and actually don't push the content down

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Microslop Manifesto”

5. seems to sastify my search requirements while keeping my payment info private

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results”

6. Brave Search has its own index which is fine, 10 blue links and no forced AI

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”

7. Fantastic to block sites that game SEO but don’t actually find what you want

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Pinterest is drowning in a sea of AI slop and auto-moderation”

8. Been a happy user for at least 1-2 years now. Its AI summaries are great

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Back to Kagi”

9. Brave Search is the best alternative because of their independent index

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”

10. more anonymity-focused, because your searches aren't tied to an account

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Back to Kagi”

11. Perplexity, Google, Brave, and DDG have really good AI search results.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “60% of Legal Searches Now End Without a Click”

12. Brave has a much better AI search than either Google or DuckDuckGo.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo”

13. quite good for private browsing and supposedly private AI answers

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “ChatGPT Targets Ads to You Based on Your Prompts, Phone Number, and Email”

14. I use Brave search and usually the AI response is more than good

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”

15. allow to block off crappy searches like pinterest all the time

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”

16. It does it's own indexing which is better than google or bings

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo”

17. provides anonymous Brave Search with Goggles out of the box

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin”

18. albeit Brave Search is slower to Google, you get used to it

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update”

19. Brave search has maybe worse results and I miss the bangs

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Back to Kagi”

20. Because they serve their own independent search index

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Pa. high court rules that police can access Google searches without a warrant”

21. Brave is such a horrible brand. I don't think they'll succeed, but they're definitely trying to do MS-style EEE.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”

22. From time to time you get blocked on the duckduckgo, brave or whatever search and you must solve some captures

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine”

23. Haven't been able to replicate that kind of accuracy with the likes of ddg or brave search.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Back to Kagi”

24. Brave scrapes the web via their users, cannot be individually disallowed in robots.txt

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Google Search Is Dying. What Comes Next Is Worse”

25. My home IP is apparently permanently banned from using Brave Search through SearXNG.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “DeepSeek search and fetch – $0.75 per 1000 successful requests”

26. fiddling with advertising-linked cryptocurrency and content injection

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Google Search Is Dying. What Comes Next Is Worse”

27. brave is about as private as a public library

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Pa. high court rules that police can access Google searches without a warrant”

28. It's shocking how many developers and tinkerers still rely on Google when there's Brave, Kagi and others out there.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “I'm losing the SEO battle for my own open source project”

29. It just searches for what you ask for. You can disable AI overviews. It's quick. Has a nice UI. It's free lol

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Ask HN: What are the viable alternatives to DuckDuckGo?”

30. often gives better results than google, especially in cases where google censors the results

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “I switched to Brave”

31. I still rely on Brave / Mojeek / Marginalia to do much of the heavy lifting for me

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi”

32. When you type in a search query in the address bar, it defaults to Brave Search.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Google officially announces that ads will be included in AI Mode search results”

33. Brave search works really well, I haven't switched to Google search for months.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Google Search Is Dying. What Comes Next Is Worse”

34. My order for best private search engine goes brave>Kagi>Duckduckgo=startpage

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode”

35. Terrible image results. I prefer Brave's website results to Google though.

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results”

36. That's Brave Search, these days. Lots of folks seem to like it?

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla”

37. It was just magically giving me the correct delete statements

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “C –> Java != Java –> LLM”

38. I've been using Brave search since it was first announced.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”

39. The name collision with the browser is a bit unfortunate.

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Ask HN: What are the viable alternatives to DuckDuckGo?”

40. Brave search is everything I wanted DDG to be, great work

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Mullvad: Shutting down our search proxy Leta”