MevaSearch vs Ecosia: two European search engines with different missions
Ecosia is a free search engine from Berlin that uses its profits for climate action. MevaSearch is a paid search engine from Poland that focuses on privacy and has no ads at all. Both are European, but they are funded in opposite ways, and that shapes everything else.
Ads for the planet or a subscription without ads
Ecosia is run by Ecosia GmbH in Berlin. Like other search engines it shows ads next to the results, and the money from ad clicks goes into climate action. According to Ecosia, it uses 100 percent of its profits for the planet, with the majority going into tree planting projects around the world.
MevaSearch is a Polish search engine created by Igor Oprządek and the WebOrbiton team. Instead of ads, it is funded by subscriptions. There are no ads, we do not build user profiles and we do not keep a search history linked to your account.
Where the results come from
According to its privacy policy, Ecosia works with Microsoft Bing or Google to provide search results and ads, and a growing number of users get Google results by default. You can switch to Bing in the settings. Together with the French search engine Qwant, Ecosia also founded European Search Perspective, which builds its own European index called Staan, and in August 2025 Ecosia began serving its own results to users in France.
MevaSearch combines results from the Brave Search API, its own Polish index WebAtlas and Wikipedia. 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 Google nor Bing.
AI answers
Ecosia offers an AI chat. According to its privacy policy, chat queries are sent to the French company Mistral AI, which does not keep the data under a zero data retention policy. Ecosia does not share personal data with Mistral AI, but anything personal you type into the chat is sent along with it.
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.
Privacy
Ecosia says it does not sell your data and does not use your searches to personalise ads elsewhere. At the same time, its privacy policy explains that your IP address and search terms are shared with its search partners, Microsoft Bing or Google, every time you search, because those partners provide the results and ads. Ecosia anonymises your IP address after a maximum of 7 days, and ads are not personalised unless you agree to it.
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.
Prices
Ecosia is free, because the ads pay for it. 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, Ecosia clearly wins. With MevaSearch you pay so that your searches do not have to go to Google or Microsoft and so that you never see an ad.
Families and businesses
With MevaSearch Plus and Pro you can create extra profiles, each with its own login, so family members never need your password while sharing your plan. For younger users there is Kids Mode, which locks SafeSearch at the strictest level and blocks access to payment settings.
For businesses, MevaSearch offers a separate plan at 89.99 dollars a month. It includes a shared pool of 9,000 searches, 10,000 AI answers, 10 team profiles and VAT invoices issued by the payment provider.
Where Ecosia is stronger
Ecosia is free, and every search helps fund climate projects, which is a beautiful idea. Thanks to Google and Bing its results cover a huge part of the web, and its work on the European index Staan is an important step for the whole continent. It also has apps and its own browser. If you want a free search engine that does some good with every query, Ecosia is an excellent choice.
What makes MevaSearch stand out
MevaSearch gives you a clean page without 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 a free search engine and like the idea that your searches help plant trees, choose Ecosia. If you would rather pay a little so that your searches never reach Google or Microsoft, never see an ad and get AI answers from Anthropic, MevaSearch is the better fit.
Both are European projects that want a better web, they just get there in different ways. With the 3 day trial of the Lite plan, you can easily compare them yourself.