Qwant

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
• Brave SearchPeople recommend it as a private search engine with its own independent index, optional AI answers, and no forced AI. Critics say its results are sometimes weaker than Google's.67recommend
• 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

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 56 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Qwant just tries to copy/paste Google for instance (though interestingly enough, sometimes it has better results than Google

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Search tool that only returns content created before ChatGPT's public release”

2. Qwant did bring up a page when I tried the second search to make me slide something to verify I'm human.

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Just the Browser”

3. Yesterday was the first time Qwant delivered better results than Google search.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Slop Is Everywhere for Those with Eyes to See”

4. some may want to pay for Qwant instead of Kagi, given that Qwant is in Europe

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Why is DuckDuckGo worse than Bing?”

5. the results Qwant delivered were objectively better than from Google Search

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Just the Browser”

6. still not that great, and I hate that its default UI is a clone of Google

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

7. they need to get their own search index fully filled and stop using Bing

   Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “EU Parliament switches to Qwant search engine from Google in sovereignty push”

8. semi-ok but it also omits tons of things that Google Search finds

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Building a Simple Search Engine That Works”

9. Ecosia/Qwant (actually private solutions) are working on it.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Eight European countries face 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland”

10. I love Qwant and I think it works better than DuckDuckGo.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Leaving Google has actively improved my life”

11. qwant sometimes having better results than google search

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

12. in some cases better results using the same search query

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Disney+: New user agreement allows ads before movies in all subscriptions”

13. Qwant ain't bad. I've been using it for about a year.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “/e/OS is a complete "deGoogled", mobile ecosystem”

14. Or trying to use a European search engine like Qwant

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “DeGoogled Phones, Made in Europe”

15. omits tons of things that Google Search finds

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Building a Simple Search Engine That Works”

16. Im using qwant now and i feel its better.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Kagi Small Web”

17. Rather use Qwant, Brave or even Ecosia.

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

18. Qwant as search engine is pretty good.

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

19. they copy/pasted the horrible Google Search UI. That's bad. And the search results also suck.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Google News is just Forrest Gump's shrimp boat now”

20. they always were a company to extract money from the french taxpayer to wrap bing results

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

21. they're really difficult to integrate with SearXNG due to the aggressive captchas

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

22. Qwant also sucks, by the way - they just copy/pasted Google's search UI

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms”

23. Qwant is somewhat focused on France, so coverage really depends on whether that is the market you're looking for.

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Leaving Google has actively improved my life”

24. it's a noble effort, but they're so late to the game that it's hard to see them making a significant dent

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Google is ending full-web search for niche search engines”

25. decent for coding and French (culture, language, or both) queries

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “3rd Yandex Cloud Data Center Was Hit”

26. the major things that changes is that the IA bullshit is gone

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “How to disable or avoid intrusive AI”

27. Qwant, if nothing else, is a superior image search engine

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Leaving Google has actively improved my life”

28. i will continue to support them

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

29. as of now I'll stick to Qwant.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Show HN: Uruky (EU-based Kagi alternative) now has Image Search and URL Rewrites”

30. the EU search engine mentioned in the article (Quant) is currently "temporarily unavailable" when searching

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

31. I just tried Qwant out of curiousity and immediately got a headache from the bright blue-purple color.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “EU Parliament switches to Qwant search engine from Google in sovereignty push”

32. But of course they managed to cut themselves a nice salary with EU funds, paid in part by me and you

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Google is ending full-web search for niche search engines”

33. Qwant was the worst, as the official website was the second result amongst multiple fake websites

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

34. It's slow. As compared to Google or Kagi, getting the results of a search feels sloooow.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Back to Kagi”

35. DuckDuckGo? Qwant? They, oddly enough, manage to be even worse crap than Google search

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “How much of F-Droid is LLM generated?”

36. The fact you've probably never heard of it shows how well that went.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Amália and the Future of European Portuguese LLMs”

37. this is basically exactly how Google started nearly 30 years ago

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “/e/OS is a complete "deGoogled", mobile ecosystem”

38. DDG, Bing & Qwant are just not good enough for my use.

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

39. they still strip special characters from phrases

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Ask HN: General purpose search engine that will respect special characters?”

40. Qwant just copy/pasted Google's horrible UI.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “EU fines Google €890M for competition breaches over search and apps”