Recommendations

Provider	Search Index	Links
⭐ DuckDuckGo	Bing	Privacy Settings Onion Service Privacy Policy
SearXNG	You can choose	Privacy Settings Public Instances Source Code
Mojeek	Independent	Privacy Policy
Metager	Scopia, Yahoo, Bing, Mojeek, Yandex and Brave	Onion Service Source Code Privacy Policy
Whoogle	Google	Public Instances Source Code
Startpage	Google and Bing	Privacy Settings Onion Service Privacy Policy
Brave Search	Independent	Privacy Settings Onion Service Privacy Policy

Consequences of using public instances

If someone uses a public instance, they have to trust the administrator of that instance. This means that the user of the public instance does not know whether their requests are logged, aggregated and sent or sold to a third party.

Also, public instances without proper protection are more vulnerable to abusing the search service, In this case the external service in exchange returns CAPTCHAs or bans the IP of the instance. Thus, search requests return less results.