Obtains Google search results while protecting users’ privacy. Based in the Netherlands. Launched in 1998.
Reviewed by Gabriel Bachmann
Startpage
startpage.com 1 rating so far*
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Threat level
Covered
A covered pick. Anyone can use it as a private drop-in, with no setup or know-how. Enough for most people. Threat levels
Our take
The pitch is Google’s results without Google’s tracking, which is genuinely useful if you find privacy-focused engines return weaker results but still want to escape the profiling. The catch is that it’s closed-source and proxies a company you may be trying to get away from, so you’re trusting Startpage’s word on the privacy layer. Choose it when result quality is non-negotiable and you’ll accept a closed intermediary to get there. Anyone wanting an independent index that doesn’t touch Google should look at Mojeek instead.
Website at a glance
startpage.com
B score 75
Solid website security headers
Graded by Mozilla HTTP Observatory, tested 1d ago
Inspect this site yourself
Measures the security configuration of the tool's own website, not the privacy of the product itself. A strong tool can still score low here.
Startpage alternatives
Brave Search Blog post about the new Brave Search beta . Based in the US. Launched in June 2021.
Mojeek A crawler-based search engine that provides independent search results using its own index of web pages, rather than using results from other search engines. Based in the UK.…
DuckDuckGo Privacy-focused search engine and mobile browser that blocks trackers and searches without profiling you. Partially open source, based in the US.
Qwant French private search engine, EU-hosted, no personal data stored, blending its own index with Bing results.
Kagi Paid, ad-free search engine with no tracking, customizable result ranking, and a small free trial.
SearXNG The actively maintained successor to Searx. Self-hostable, open source metasearch engine. Users can access existing public instances.
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