# Qwant

22 Hacker News commenters recommended Qwant and 17 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** Recommended as a European alternative to Google that sometimes gives better results, though critics say it omits results Google finds and copies Google's interface.

## Why people recommend it

- Sometimes better results than Google (5 comments): "Qwant just tries to copy/paste Google for instance (though interestingly enough, sometimes it has better results than Google" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46105308)) "Yesterday was the first time Qwant delivered better results than Google search." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46653826)) "the results Qwant delivered were objectively better than from Google Search" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46646445))
- European, private alternative to Google (4 comments): "some may want to pay for Qwant instead of Kagi, given that Qwant is in Europe" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945788)) "Ecosia/Qwant (actually private solutions) are working on it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673732)) "Or trying to use a European search engine like Qwant" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46678140))
- Good general search quality (4 comments): "I love Qwant and I think it works better than DuckDuckGo." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186039)) "Qwant ain't bad. I've been using it for about a year." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47218710)) "Im using qwant now and i feel its better." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47413795))

## What people warn about

- Copies Google's search interface (4 comments): "Qwant just tries to copy/paste Google for instance (though interestingly enough, sometimes it has better results than Google" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46105308)) "still not that great, and I hate that its default UI is a clone of Google" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49670987)) "they copy/pasted the horrible Google Search UI. That's bad. And the search results also suck." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138262))
- Omits results Google finds (2 comments): "semi-ok but it also omits tons of things that Google Search finds" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45952206)) "omits tons of things that Google Search finds" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45951831))
- Relies on Bing results (2 comments): "they need to get their own search index fully filled and stop using Bing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48398994)) "they always were a company to extract money from the french taxpayer to wrap bing results" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48267500))
- Frequent captchas and human checks (2 comments): "Qwant did bring up a page when I tried the second search to make me slide something to verify I'm human." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46647481)) "they're really difficult to integrate with SearXNG due to the aggressive captchas" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50153344))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Kagi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kagi.md): 732 recommend
- [DuckDuckGo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/duckduckgo.md): 286 recommend
- [SearXNG](https://hackerapproved.com/p/searxng.md): 76 recommend
- [Brave Search](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brave-search.md): 67 recommend
- [Startpage](https://hackerapproved.com/p/startpage.md): 25 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.qwant.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Qwant", https://hackerapproved.com/p/qwant/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).