MetaGer

What Is MetaGer?

Privacy search has become a crowded market, populated mostly by commercial businesses making privacy promises. DuckDuckGo is a Delaware-incorporated company subject to US law. Brave Search is a US company. Startpage, despite its Dutch domain, was acquired by Privacy One Group — itself connected to System1, a US advertising technology company.

MetaGer is different in a way that is genuinely unusual: it is operated by SUMA-EV, a German non-profit registered association (eingetragener Verein) whose stated purpose is promoting free access to knowledge infrastructure. MetaGer started in 1996 as a project of the University of Hannover — making it older than Google — and has been run by SUMA-EV since 2004. The organisation exists to operate a privacy-respecting search service, not to generate returns for investors or shareholders. There are none.

The service runs on servers exclusively located in Germany, subject to the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG), one of the strictest data protection regimes in the world. The source code is published under the AGPLv3 licence on SUMA-EV's GitLab instance — meaning the privacy claims are auditable by anyone, not just taken on trust.

Key Features

Metasearch Without Tracking

MetaGer works by aggregating search results from multiple engines — Bing, Brave, Mojeek, Yandex, and others — and returning combined results without tracking the user's IP address or query history. There are no user accounts, no persistent cookies that track across sessions, and no advertising profiles. Revenue comes from a small number of labelled sponsor results and optional membership contributions.

The metasearch approach means results quality depends on the underlying engines. For most general queries, the combined results are adequate, though for highly specialised or real-time queries, single-engine alternatives like Google will outperform. This is a deliberate trade-off: MetaGer optimises for the privacy of the search act, not for the marginal quality advantage of a fully indexed proprietary engine.

Anonymous Proxy

MetaGer's most distinctive feature beyond basic privacy search is the anonymous proxy. Alongside each search result, there is an "open in anonymous view" link. Clicking it routes the request through MetaGer's servers, so the destination website sees MetaGer's IP address rather than the user's. The destination site cannot identify the visitor or add them to a tracking pool. This goes materially further than search engine anonymity alone — most privacy search engines stop at protecting the search query; MetaGer extends protection through to the click.

AGPLv3 Open Source

The source code is available at MetaGer's GitLab instance under AGPLv3. This is the strongest open source licence for a network service: AGPLv3 requires that anyone running a modified version of the software over a network must also publish their modifications. In practice, this means SUMA-EV cannot make hidden modifications to the privacy-relevant code without triggering a licence violation. The privacy claims are structurally verifiable, not just asserted in a policy document.

OpenStreetMap-Based Maps

MetaGer's map search uses OpenStreetMap data rather than Google Maps or Apple Maps. This is consistent with the platform's philosophy — using privacy-respecting, community-driven infrastructure across the entire product. OpenStreetMap coverage is generally excellent for European locations and continues to improve globally.

Browser Integration and Apps

MetaGer supports OpenSearch integration, meaning users can add it as a browser search engine in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and most Chromium-based browsers from the address bar. Firefox and Chrome extensions are available. Android and iOS apps exist, though they are less polished than DuckDuckGo's mobile applications.

Pricing

MetaGer is free to use with no account required. Anonymous searches are available without any registration or payment. Some labelled sponsor results appear in the free tier to support SUMA-EV's operating costs.

Optional MetaGer membership costs €15/year — approximately €1.25/month. This is framed explicitly as a donation to support the non-profit's infrastructure, not a subscription to a commercial product. Members receive a reduced-ad search experience and contribute to keeping the service running. The membership is voluntary; the search service is fully functional without it.

For organisations interested in contributing more, SUMA-EV accepts larger donations and has a membership structure for institutional supporters.

EU Compliance & Privacy

MetaGer's compliance posture is unusually strong and unusually verifiable.

Servers are exclusively in Germany. German BDSG is, by design, one of the strictest implementations of EU data protection principles in the world — Bavaria's data protection authority (BayLDA) and the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection are among the most active supervisory authorities in Europe. SUMA-EV operates under this jurisdiction directly.

No IP addresses are logged. No user profiles are built. No search history is retained. These claims are not merely written in a privacy policy — the AGPLv3 codebase allows technically capable users to verify the implementation. SUMA-EV publishes an annual report and is subject to non-profit governance transparency requirements under German law.

For the subset of users for whom "we operate on trust" is insufficient — journalists, activists, legal professionals, researchers — MetaGer's combination of EU jurisdiction, German non-profit legal structure, and auditable open source code provides a level of privacy assurance that is genuinely rare in the search market.

Who It's Best For

Privacy-conscious individuals who want more than a commercial company's privacy policy. MetaGer's non-profit structure, German jurisdiction, and open source code provide structural privacy guarantees that commercial alternatives cannot replicate.

European organisations with privacy requirements — healthcare, legal, research, public sector — where using a US-incorporated search provider raises legitimate data sovereignty concerns.

Privacy researchers and auditors who want to inspect the actual search infrastructure rather than rely on third-party certifications.

Open source advocates who prefer software operating under strong copyleft licences and want their search infrastructure aligned with their values.

If the priority is verifiable, audit-grade privacy with non-profit governance, choose MetaGer. If the priority is balancing privacy with stronger result quality and a polished consumer interface, choose Qwant or Ecosia instead. If the priority is climate impact alongside privacy, choose Ecosia for its tree-planting commitment.

The Verdict

MetaGer does not try to compete on result quality with Google, and it should not be evaluated as if it does. What it offers is something categorically different: a privacy-first search service operated by a non-profit with auditable open source code, servers exclusively in Germany, no IP logging, and an anonymous proxy that extends privacy protection through to the click. Thirty years after its founding at the University of Hannover, MetaGer remains the strongest answer to users who want verifiable rather than promised privacy in their search engine.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does MetaGer actually not log IP addresses?

MetaGer's privacy policy states that no IP addresses are logged. Unlike commercial privacy search engines, this claim is verifiable — the AGPLv3 source code is publicly available on SUMA-EV's GitLab instance and can be audited by any technically capable reviewer. SUMA-EV is a German non-profit with no commercial incentive to retain user data.

What is SUMA-EV?

SUMA-EV (Verein zur Förderung freier Informationsinfrastrukturen e.V.) is a German non-profit registered association advocating for free access to knowledge infrastructure. It was founded in 2004 and is the legal operator of MetaGer. The organisation is registered in Hannover and governed under German non-profit law, which includes transparency and governance requirements that commercial entities are not subject to.

How does MetaGer's anonymous proxy work?

When you perform a search on MetaGer, each result includes an "open in anonymous view" link. Clicking this routes the page request through MetaGer's servers in Germany, so the destination website receives MetaGer's IP address rather than yours. This prevents the destination site from building a tracking profile based on your visit. The proxy is available on all results at no extra cost.

Is MetaGer search quality as good as Google or DuckDuckGo?

For most everyday queries, MetaGer's metasearch results are adequate. For highly specialised queries, breaking news, or queries requiring real-time indexing, Google and Bing will outperform MetaGer's aggregated results. MetaGer is a privacy-first product, not a search quality competition. Users who find themselves needing to fall back to Google regularly may want to use MetaGer for privacy-sensitive searches specifically, and a higher-quality engine for general research.

How is MetaGer funded?

MetaGer is funded by a small number of labelled sponsor results in search output and optional membership contributions from users (€15/year). There is no investor funding, no advertising technology, and no data monetisation. SUMA-EV publishes annual reports covering operating costs and revenue. The membership model is intentionally transparent: users are contributing to infrastructure, not subscribing to a commercial service.