It’s good to use a variety of search engines with Tor and/or avoid the use of JavaScript which can fingerprint you as unique. You want to prevent any one party from seeing all of your search requests.
Brave Search
Type: Engine
Pro: Good independent results that aren’t dependent on Google or Microsoft. Brave also has less of an authoritative pro-centralized power bias than “Bigger Tech”
Con: Brave uses Amazon Datacenters, and that’s a huge negative for decentralization and privacy. Check a DNS record: https://bgp.tools/dns/search.brave.com
Also with Tor browser, Brave has issues with Web Assembly and requires JavaScript
Solutions: Brave’s Tor Onion Service actually doesn’t need JavaScript, you can find that here:
search.brave4u7jddbv7cyviptqjc7jusxh72uik7zt6adtckl5f4nwy2v72qd.onion
Mojeek.com
Type: Engine
Pro: No JavaScript is required with this completely independent engine. Mojeek gives unique results.
Con: It’s not as good at doing conceptual searches on educational topics.
Solutions: Use Mojeek when you know what you want
Duckduckgo
Type: Front end
Pro: Tor browser’s default search engine, so using it with Tor makes you blend in.
Con: Microsoft datacenters and it pulls results from Bing, which pushes pro-government propaganda. Also when I click a search result, the browser extension uBlock Origin shows me the new website is making 3rd party JavaScript calls to “improving.duckduckgo” which doesn’t seem like such a privacy friendly thing going on.
Opinion: The image download is smooth, maybe only use it for that
SearXNG
Type: Software
Pro: Self-hosted open source search that pulls results from Brave, Duckduckgo, Qwant, Google, ect. This way you know it’s not browser fingerprinting you or logging.
Con: Many of these search engines will block SearX instances
Solutions: One great work-around is to use farside.link. This service will automatically serve you up a SearXNG instance when using the URL: farside.link/searxng
Set that to your homepage and you’re set
LibreX
Type: Software
Pro: LibreX is a great No-JavaScript Tor-friendly torrent searcher, so you can get magnet links without ads across a few different torrent sites. It’s similar to SearXNG as it’s self hosted, and also has a front end for Google, but is often less blocked than SearXNG.
Con: It’s not as popular as SearXNG, so the selection on farside is slimmer. Auto-serve Link: farside.link/librex
Qwant
Type: Front-end
Pro: They are in France and supposedly bound by GDPR
Con: Another Bing Front end that’s less honest about being a Bing front end, with annoying captchas for Tor. Qwant also sends data to Microsoft Ads. Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231107110040/https://about.qwant.com/legal/confidentialite/
France is turning towards tyranny, so I question if GDPR will be upheld with VPN restrictions and digital IDs
Yandex
Type: Engine
Pro: Russian alternative to get alternative views (such as criticizing the CIA) that Bing or Google based engines may censor. As Mental Outlaw points out, it’s also good for torrents
Con: Tor Captchas. Requires JavaScript. Unclear privacy policies.
Solutions: Use MetaGer as a front end…
MetaGer
Type: Front-end
Pro: Tor & No JavaScript friendly, Open Source blend of results from Yandex, Scopia, and Yahoo. There’s also an “open anonymously” proxy option, which is serving it to you through their proxy so third party JavaScript is not called upon. If you ever are in a situation where uBlock Origin is having issues, then this may be a great alternative to not be fingerprinted by the third party JavaScript.
Con: If you use this proxy option, you’re putting a lot of trust in MetaGer to see you navigate this site. As opposed to just clicking on a link in a new tab with no javascript where they don’t even know what you did.
Startpage
Type: Front end
Pro: Google front end that’s never blocked
Con: Google without their AI surveillance is actually shitty results, and it’s got so much unrelated propaganda shoved in there. Google’s “sources” are just the same few popular websites. See our previous article on Google’s propaganda.
Ombrelo
Type: Front end
Pro: Ombrelo is a Tor onion search engine that automatically crosses out CloudFlare websites for you, since CloudFlare is not privacy-friendly
Con: Since so many websites use CloudFlare due to corrupt centralization of the internet, Ombrelo will sadly give you few results you can actually click on. But try for yourself:
ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion
Our content is likely to be censored from nearly all search engines and banned on Big Tech platforms. While I have strong determination to persist under any adversity, your sharing of our content is the only way this can succeed. Please, do not let privacy die.