this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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Fuck AI

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I currently use Startpage, but i'm wary of their Vanish AI. Or at least tired of seeing ads for it. I use Wiby and Marginalia already, but their indexes aren't really broad enough for much of what i need.

I figure this is a good place to ask because nobody here is going to recommend anything with an Al overview or other such crap.

Looking at my browser history, what i search for is technical problems with Linux, linguistics, games i play, CAD, fonts, recipes, typography, all sorts of stuff. Hence the desire for a general purpose search engine.

So what do you folks use? Is it just noai.duckduckgo.com for everyone?

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[–] ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I'd recommend Kagi if you don't mind paying. They have optional AI features, but they also have anti-AI features... Not sure how this community feels about Kagi but It works great and also let's you customize results and widgets, so you can disable ai summaries and image result boxes for example, and pin/raise/lower/block domains, or have custom 'lenses' that narrow search criteria: particularly useful for technical / reference searching

[–] scintilla@piefed.zip 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] myrmidex@belgae.social 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

thirded, couldn't be happier with it.

[–] DougHolland@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Fourthed. I'm a rotten cheapskate who pirates movies and wears thrift store clothes and mooches meals from friends, but I pay for Kagi and it's worth more than the price.

[–] ElectricWaterfall@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Do you have unlimited or starter? I feel like 300 searches a month is nothing. I’d be happy to pay $5 a month but $10 seems steep to me.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 3 points 1 month ago

I would try the 300 and upgrade to unlimited if you hit the limit, personally.

[–] scintilla@piefed.zip 2 points 1 month ago

I personally search over 20 times a day so I suggest using the free searches they give you then deciding whether the 10$ is worth it.

[–] nurunuru@leminal.space 1 points 1 month ago

personally I mix using ddg with kagi for the "what's the name of that website again?" or "where's that place?" kind of searches that I do regularly and find I stay below the 300 searches easily. depends on your usage case ofc

[–] green_red_black@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Noai.ducduckgo is my go to

[–] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

Same. I fallback to Startpage when duck isn't giving me results but that doesn't happen too often.

[–] machiavellian@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

html.duckduckgo.com is even better imho

[–] IndigoGollum@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The former redirects to the latter. Any reason that's better than DuckDuckGo lite? The main difference i see is that the lite version relies less on CSS so i can use it in basically any browser.

[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I use Ecosia and Qwant. They are European services. Ecosia has AI button, but you don’t need to use it. Ecosia and Qwant have built a European search index, and will hopefully expand its usage through out this year.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Ecosia and Qwant have built a European search index

Did they build one each, or one together?

[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's a joint venture by the two. Here's a blog post from last year: https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/

And, this is the webpage of the search index: https://www.eu-searchperspective.com/

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Ah, nice. Thank you very much.

[–] phneutral@feddit.org 4 points 1 month ago

One together.

[–] teft@piefed.social 9 points 1 month ago

Noai.duckduckgo.com

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago

I've been using startpage for about two years. It's okay. Not great but good enough that it handles 95% of my searches.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 month ago

eTools.ch seems to work well for me. Disable javascript since it only enables analytics.