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Why I Use Uruky, a Private Search Engine

23 Jun, 2026

This post was last edited 1 minute ago .

I've been paying for Uruky search engine for several months now. Uruky's software engineer, Bruno, reached out to me in April with an offer to try it for free for a limited period; after that I began paying for the service.

You might be wondering why someone would pay for a search engine when there are good privacy alternatives available for free. I put this question to Bruno last month; you can read his take on paying for private search in my interview and in the article Why pay for search? on Uruky's website.

Switching to a privacy search engine developed by a tiny team is not as straightforward as, for example, switching from WhatsApp to Signal, but I think it's worth considering.

About private search engines<br>Up until recently, I used DuckDuckGo as my search engine. I would still recommend this to friends, family, colleagues, students as a good option, because it is so easy to set it as your new default search engine in any browser.

Our searches say a lot about us and should be kept private; this data should not be for sale. Privacy search engines promise to keep your searches truly private, whereas a company like Google actually earns its money with the searches you do on their search engine.

I have experimented with other private search engines, like Startpage, Brave Search, Qwant, Ecosia and SearXNG.

Startpage and SearXNG are examples of metasearch engines, which use the results of existing search engines, such as Google or Bing. Additionally, SearXNG is software that needs to be hosted by someone, either through self-hosting or finding the webpage of someone who will host an instance for you.

The search engines above each have their unique angle to user privacy. Ecosia has an additional focus on climate, for example, stating on their main page:

We use 100% of profits for the planet

Qwant is French and has data servers in the EU, which has stronger privacy laws with GDPR. Brave Search has the advantage of being built into the Brave browser by default, making Brave a good tool to recommend to people new to privacy, and it does not rely on Big Tech search indexes. Startpage uses Google search results, is based in the EU (The Netherlands) and focuses on anonymity.

While some search engines rely on existing big web crawlers like Google or Bing, anonymising the search data, others have made their own, albeit smaller search indexes, or offer a combination of these.

There are several good articles on search engines, such as 5 privacy-focused alternative search engines to Google on Proton's blog, and Search Engines on Privacy Guides.

Uruky and Kagi<br>This brings me to a unique set of search engines: Uruky and Kagi. In his interview with me last month, Bruno wrote:

Then there are options like Kagi or Uruky, which put a more "conventional spin" on search, by selling great search as the product, instead of selling ads to advertisers. As a consumer, you pay directly and financially, for the "non-enshittified" search experience.

The New Oil and Techlore cover Kagi in their recommendations, with Techlore stating:

Kagi is a paid search engine with its own index, no ads, and no tracking. Funded entirely by subscriptions rather than data collection. The paid model removes the conflict of interest that shapes most search engines. Worth considering if you're frustrated with ad-heavy results and willing to pay for a cleaner experience.

Uruky has not received such coverage yet as it is relatively new, but it operates on a similar model: you pay for the product with money, in order to avoid paying by other means (advertising, sale of your data).

When I asked Bruno how Uruky differs from Kagi, he responded that

It's cheaper and based in the EU. It also collects no personal information (Kagi collects your email, for example).

He adds that Uruky also allows for more personalisation (which I can attest to) and that customers will be given the source code of Uruky after subscribing for 12 months. He does concede that Kagi has a wider range of products, including AI summaries, news, etc.

If all of this has piqued your interest in Kagi, you can find their pricing page here. The rest of my article will focus on Uruky.

Uruky: what works well?

Transparency and customisability

Uruky's Settings page has helped me gain some insight in how search results come to be, and how these can differ quite dramatically depending on the search providers you select.

I like that as a user I have control over the priority of search providers, and can exclude any I don't want. In this way, Uruky is open and also helpful and educational about what's going on behind the scenes when you do a search.

A simple user interface with quick access to alternative results

I've seen some criticism of the simple appearance of Uruky's main page, but it works for...