A side-by-side comparison
Brave Search vs DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is known as a private alternative to Big Tech search engines. What most users don’t know is that DuckDuckGo doesn’t have its own index—DDG is mostly powered by Bing.
DuckDuckGo sources the vast majority of its search results from Microsoft Bing. This means bias or censorship in Bing will also appear in DuckDuckGo; it also means DDG may make decisions (like this one) that favor their ad revenue agreement with Microsoft. So while DuckDuckGo is better for privacy than Google or Bing, it still leaves much to be desired in terms of independence.
How does DuckDuckGo compare to Brave Search? Let’s find out.
Is Brave Search more private than DuckDuckGo?
While DuckDuckGo may look like an independent search engine, it’s actually powered by other Big Tech companies like Microsoft. In fact, virtually all of DuckDuckGo’s search results come straight from Bing. DuckDuckGo does proxy your searches, so they aren’t directly tied to you, but using DuckDuckGo is essentially just using Bing with an added layer of privacy.
While DDG is labeled as a private search engine, the fact it’s powered by a company notorious for tracking users is a potential problem. For example, the ads in DuckDuckGo are Bing ads—meaning they’re powered by Microsoft and, if you click them, Microsoft’s ad network will see your IP address (though they claim they won’t profile you with this information).
Brave Search, by contrast, is powered by an independent index free from Big Tech:
Chart describes default settings
- Full protection
- Limited protection
- No protection, or off by default
It’s important to understand that DuckDuckGo uses Big Tech search indexes, and then attempts to remove all the profiling and data collection after the fact.
Brave Search, meanwhile, is private by default. There’s no need to remove invasive tracking techniques, because these techniques were never present to begin with.
Are Brave Search results better quality than DuckDuckGo?
While Brave Search and DuckDuckGo both protect user privacy (albeit with very different approaches), the key difference in terms of search results quality is that Brave is powered by an independent index. Brave Search builds its index via the Web Discovery Project, which uses anonymous browsing data from real humans to build the index, ensuring users see higher-quality results and fewer junk pages. DuckDuckGo is just a more private way to get your results from Bing—don’t expect any higher quality than what Bring provides on its own.
Check out the comparison based on results quality and transparency:
Chart describes default settings
- Full functionality
- Limited functionality
- No functionality, or off by default
Brave Search offers superior search results with a user-driven, independent search index, and powerful customization options.
FAQs
What is Brave Search?
Brave Search is the world’s most complete, independent, private search engine. By integrating Brave Search into its privacy-first Brave browser, Brave offers the first all-in-one browser/search alternative to Big Tech platforms. Brave Search is available as the default search engine in Brave or most other major browsers, or at search.brave.com.
How do I use Brave Search, or set it as default?
For some Brave users who downloaded the Brave browser on October 19, 2021 or later, Brave Search will be automatically set as the default search engine. Simply start a search in the address bar of any Brave browser tab. Learn more.
All other users can set Brave Search as the default search engine in Brave or most other major browsers, and then search from the address bar of any browser tab. To check the default search engine in the Brave Browser, open the settings page at brave://settings/search.
You can also use Brave Search by visiting search.brave.com from any browser.
What are the disadvantages of the DuckDuckGo search engine?
First and most importantly, DuckDuckGo does not have its own search index—all of its search results come from Microsoft Bing. This means any censoring or manipulation of search results in Bing will pass through to DuckDuckGo. This also means that search ads in DuckDuckGo are actually Bing ads, and clicking one of those ads may lead to additional tracking from Microsoft.
Can I be tracked if I use DuckDuckGo?
Your searches and search results in DuckDuckGo are mostly private. However, if you click an ad from their search results page you’ll likely be exposed to Microsoft’s tracking, since all of DuckDuckGo’s search results (including ads) come from Microsoft Bing.
Do I have to use Brave Search if I use the Brave browser?
No. You can still use other search engines in the Brave browser. Just visit the Web address of that search engine (like google.com), or set another engine as the default in the Brave browser.
Can I use Brave Search in browsers other than Brave?
Yes, you can set Brave Search as the default search engine in most major browsers. (Note that Apple’s Safari browser still does not currently allow for Brave Search to be set as the default search engine.) Or visit search.brave.com.
We also offer API access to Brave Search so developers and other companies can power their search engines with Brave’s search index.
How is Brave Search different? What does "independent" mean?
First, and most importantly, Brave Search adheres to core principles of privacy. We don’t profile you. Ever. This is far different from most other search engines, who collect every piece of data about your search behavior and tie it directly to you as a way to sell more targeted ads.
Second, Brave Search operates from a fully independent search index. An index is the list of billions of webpages, and some basic info about those pages, that search engines draw from to deliver search results. Google and Bing have their own indexes as well; most other “alternative” search engines—even supposedly “neutral” or “private” ones—do not. They’re just façades that rely exclusively on third-parties for their results. If Big Tech suddenly ceased to function, those other search operators would go offline. Brave Search, meanwhile, would stay fully operational.
Independence means choice—for users to be safer online, and not be beholden to the privacy invasions, censorship, biases, or economic interests of Big Tech.
Does Brave Search filter, downrank, or censor search results?
No, Brave Search does not filter, downrank, or censor search results. Nor will we change our search algorithm to increase or decrease the prominence of results in response to current events or anyone’s political, religious, ethical, or other beliefs. Brave Search—like Brave itself—is intended to be a user-first portal to the Web, free of Big Tech’s manipulation.
However, there is one exception to this rule—we do need to comply with laws governing search engines, including CSAM, copyright takedown (DMCA), right to be forgotten (GDPR), and nation-state orders.
Also note that, if you’ve chosen to enable it, Brave Search can anonymously retrieve Google search results for your query (a feature known as Google fallback mixing). This feature can be helpful for some unique or “long-tail” queries that Brave may not serve results for. If you’ve enabled fallback mixing, and a result is censored, filtered, or re-ranked in Google, those changes would pass through to our results. You can easily see how often a third-party result is mixed (via our independence score), and our aim is to gradually reduce this mixing over time.
What is the Goggles feature, and can it help limit search censorship?
Goggles is a beta feature of Brave Search. Goggles enable anyone, or any community of people, to create sets of rules and filters to constrain the searchable space and / or alter the ordering of results. Anyone could then choose to apply a Goggle—or extend it—to their view of Brave Search results. Essentially, Goggles will act as a re-ranking option on top of the Brave Search index.
This means that, instead of a single ranking, Brave Search can offer an almost limitless number of ranking options, enabling search use-cases that could be too specific for an all-purpose search engine. While Brave Search doesn’t have editorial biases, all search engines have some level of intrinsic bias. Goggles allows users to counter this intrinsic bias in the ranking algorithm.
To access Goggles, simply conduct a search at search.brave.com, and then click the Goggles tab on the results page. Or you can visit the Goggles landing page.
Want to learn more? Read the full white paper about Goggles, or visit the GitHub repo to learn how to make your own Goggles.
What's the Web Discovery Project, and how do I opt in?
The Web Discovery Project is a privacy-preserving way for you to contribute to the growth and independence of Brave Search. If you opt in, you’ll contribute some anonymous data about searches and webpage visits made within the Brave browser (including pages arrived at via some, but not all, other search engines). This data helps build the Brave Search independent index, and ensure we show results relevant to your search queries. By “data” we mean search queries, search result clicks, the URLs of pages visited in the browser, time spent on those pages, and some metadata about the pages themselves. Learn more.
The Web Discovery Project is a privacy-preserving way for us to build the index, allowing us to both remain independent and serve better quality, more real-time results than if we relied on simple Web crawlers the way Google does.
To opt in, open the Settings menu in the Brave browser. Select Search engine on the left panel, and then toggle on Web Discovery Project. You can opt out again at any time.
