MevaSearch vs DuckDuckGo: free private search against paid search without ads
DuckDuckGo is the best known private search engine in the world, free and funded by ads. MevaSearch is a paid search engine from Poland with no ads at all. Both promise not to profile you, but they are funded and built in different ways.
Free with ads or paid without ads
DuckDuckGo, officially Duck Duck Go, Inc., is free to use and shows ads. According to its privacy policy, search ads are based on the results page you are viewing, not on a profile of you, and ad clicks are handled by Microsoft’s ad network, which has committed not to associate your ad clicks with a user profile.
MevaSearch is a Polish search engine created by Igor Oprządek and the WebOrbiton team. It is funded only by subscriptions, so there are no ads at all, we do not build user profiles and we do not keep a search history linked to your account.
Where the results come from
DuckDuckGo says it uses many sources, including specialised ones like Sportradar and crowd sourced sites like Wikipedia for its instant answers. It also runs its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, and several indexes, but its more traditional links and images come largely from Bing.
MevaSearch combines results from the Brave Search API, its own Polish index WebAtlas and Wikipedia, and when you want to see more, it adds results from the independent Mojeek index. For technical, scientific or book related queries, specialist sources appear as well, including Stack Overflow, MDN, OpenAlex, Europe PMC, Zenodo, Open Library, Codeberg and the CIRCL vulnerability database for CVE numbers. MevaSearch uses neither Bing nor Google.
Privacy
DuckDuckGo states that it does not save or share your search, chat or browsing history, and that it does not save your IP address alongside your searches or Duck.ai chats. That is a strong promise, and DuckDuckGo has kept this approach for many years.
MevaSearch keeps account data and service files on servers in the European Union, mainly in Lithuania, with backups in France. Queries to external providers such as Brave or Mojeek are sent from our servers without your IP address or account details. Visit statistics are collected with our own tool, PriviMetrics, without tracking cookies, and MevaSearch is a Polish company operating under European data protection law.
AI
DuckDuckGo offers Duck.ai, an AI chat available right next to the search box, and lets you adjust its AI features in the settings.
At MevaSearch, every AI feature runs on Claude by Anthropic. That covers short summaries above the results, MevaSearch AI chat, which remembers the conversation and cites a source for each piece of information, related searches and photo search. Requests reach Anthropic from our servers without any account details, and under Anthropic’s commercial terms, data sent through its API is not used to train its models. AI answers are included in every plan, from 200 a month on Lite to 3,000 on Pro.
Prices
DuckDuckGo search is free. MevaSearch Lite costs 4.99 dollars a month and includes 500 searches and 200 AI answers. Plus costs 14.99 dollars for 1,500 searches, 1,000 AI answers and two extra profiles. Pro costs 24.99 dollars and gives you unlimited searches, 3,000 AI answers and four profiles. The Lite plan comes with a free trial of 3 days, and MevaSearch prices include VAT.
On price DuckDuckGo clearly wins. With MevaSearch you pay so that there are no ads at all and your searches do not depend on Microsoft for results or advertising.
Families and businesses
With MevaSearch Plus and Pro you can create extra profiles, each with its own login, and Kids Mode locks SafeSearch at the strictest level and blocks access to payment settings. For businesses, there is a separate plan at 89.99 dollars a month with a shared pool of 9,000 searches, 10,000 AI answers, 10 team profiles and VAT invoices issued by the payment provider.
Where DuckDuckGo is stronger
DuckDuckGo is free, very well known and available everywhere, from browser settings to its own apps and browser. Thanks to Bing its results cover a huge part of the web, and its privacy promises are clear and simple. If you want private search without paying, DuckDuckGo is an excellent choice.
What makes MevaSearch stand out
MevaSearch gives you search without any ads, AI answers with sources, specialist results for developers and researchers, NetKrypton warnings about scam websites, the option to pin or hide domains, !bang shortcuts, dead link markers and removal of tracking parameters from links. There are also separate tabs for images, videos, news, music and podcasts, family profiles, a plan for businesses and an interface in 16 languages.
Which one should you choose
If you want free private search and do not mind ads based on your query, DuckDuckGo is a great pick. If you want no ads at all, results without Bing or Google, data handled in the European Union and AI from Anthropic, MevaSearch is the better fit.
With the 3 day trial of the Lite plan, you can easily compare them yourself.
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