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Independent search engine with its own crawler and no tracking
Mojeek is a UK-based independent search engine that operates its own web crawler and index, with a strict no-tracking policy and no use of third-party search results.
Headquarters
Brighton, United Kingdom
Founded
2004
Pricing
Employees
1-10
Free
Pay-as-you-go
Billing: monthly
Here is a claim that sounds outrageous until you check the facts: nearly every "alternative" search engine you have heard of is just Google or Bing wearing a different skin. DuckDuckGo? Bing results. Ecosia? Bing results. Startpage? Google results. Brave Search uses its own index for some queries, but falls back to third-party results for many others. The privacy-focused search market is, in large part, a reselling market.
Mojeek is the exception. Founded in 2004 in Brighton, UK, Mojeek operates its own web crawler — MojeekBot — and builds its own search index from scratch. When you search on Mojeek, the results come from Mojeek's infrastructure, not from a Microsoft or Google API with the branding swapped out. This makes Mojeek one of only a handful of truly independent search engines in the world, alongside Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu.
The company is small — fewer than ten employees — and bootstrapped. It does not have the resources to index the web as comprehensively as Google or Bing, and it does not pretend otherwise. What it does offer is genuine independence: no tracking, no profiling, no filter bubbles, and no dependence on companies whose business model requires surveilling their users.
For privacy advocates, digital sovereignty researchers, and anyone who finds it uncomfortable that two American companies control the search results for most of the planet, Mojeek represents what search could look like if it were rebuilt from first principles.
Mojeek's defining feature is its crawler, MojeekBot, which independently traverses the web and builds a search index without licensing results from Google, Bing, or any other provider. The index covers billions of pages and is continuously updated, though it is significantly smaller than the indices maintained by major search engines. This independence means Mojeek's results are genuinely its own — for better and worse. You may discover pages that Google has deprioritised, but you may also miss pages that have not yet been crawled.
Mojeek's no-tracking policy is not a marketing claim layered on top of a conventional advertising model. The company does not collect IP addresses for profiling, does not use tracking cookies, does not build user profiles, and does not sell behavioural data. The search results you see are based solely on your query and optional location preferences — not on your browsing history, demographic profile, or inferred interests.
This is fundamentally different from DuckDuckGo, which does serve ads based on search queries through its partnership with Microsoft Advertising. Mojeek shows contextual ads based on the query alone, without any user-level targeting.
Focus Filters allow users to restrict search results to specific categories of websites — for example, blogs, forums, news sites, or sites from particular regions. This is a creative response to the problem of smaller index size: rather than trying to compete with Google on breadth, Mojeek lets users narrow their search to domains where its index is strongest.
An unusual feature: Mojeek allows filtering results by emotional tone. You can bias results towards content that is informative, positive, negative, or provocative. This is experimental and not always accurate, but it represents a genuinely different approach to search result curation.
Mojeek offers a commercial Search API that provides programmatic access to its index. This is valuable for developers building privacy-first applications, researchers studying search result diversity, and organisations that want to integrate web search without depending on Google or Bing APIs. Pricing is usage-based.
Mojeek's web search is completely free to use. There are no premium tiers, no subscription plans, and no account required. The service is funded by contextual advertising — ads displayed based on the search query, not the user's profile.
The Search API is priced on a pay-per-query basis, aimed at developers and organisations. Rates vary based on volume and use case. This is a niche revenue stream, but it underscores Mojeek's position as an independent infrastructure provider rather than just a consumer search engine.
For individual users, the total cost of using Mojeek is zero. There are no hidden trade-offs — you are not paying with your data, and you are not paying with your wallet.
Mojeek is headquartered in Brighton, UK, and operates under UK GDPR — the retained version of EU GDPR that applies in the United Kingdom post-Brexit. The data protection standards are equivalent to EU GDPR, and the UK has received an adequacy decision from the European Commission.
In practice, Mojeek's compliance position is unusually strong because the company collects no personal data at all. There are no user accounts to breach, no browsing histories to leak, and no advertising profiles to misuse. The company's privacy policy is refreshingly short, because there is very little to disclose.
For European organisations evaluating search alternatives, Mojeek's European jurisdiction and zero-data-collection architecture mean there are no Schrems II concerns, no complex data processing agreements to negotiate, and no risk of personal data being accessed under foreign surveillance laws.
Privacy advocates who want to use a search engine that genuinely does not track them — not one that merely promises not to while relying on infrastructure from companies that do.
Researchers and journalists who want search results that are not filtered by personalisation algorithms. Mojeek's index provides a different perspective on the web than Google or Bing.
Developers building privacy-first applications who need a search API that does not come with the data processing baggage of Google Custom Search or Bing Search API.
Anyone dissatisfied with search monoculture who is willing to accept less comprehensive results in exchange for genuine independence.
Mojeek is not a better Google. It has a smaller index, fewer features, and less relevant results for many queries — particularly outside the English-speaking web. But that is not the right comparison. Mojeek is the only serious attempt to build a general-purpose search engine that is truly independent of Big Tech infrastructure, based in Europe, and fundamentally designed around the principle that search does not require surveillance. The results will improve as the index grows. What matters now is that Mojeek exists at all — and that it has been quietly building its own crawler since 2004, long before privacy became fashionable.
Yes. Mojeek operates its own web crawler (MojeekBot) and builds its own search index without licensing or proxying results from any other search engine. This makes it one of the very few genuinely independent search engines in the world.
Mojeek's index, while covering billions of pages, is much smaller than Google's or Bing's. The company has fewer than ten employees and a fraction of the infrastructure budget of major search engines. Result relevance is improving steadily, but gaps remain, particularly for non-English queries and niche topics.
Mojeek generates revenue through contextual advertisements displayed alongside search results. These ads are targeted based on the search query itself, not on user profiles or browsing history. The company also offers a paid Search API for commercial and research use.
Yes. Mojeek can be set as the default search engine in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Brave. The company provides instructions for each browser. Mojeek is also available as a default option in some Firefox configurations.
DuckDuckGo is stronger on result quality because it sources results from Bing, giving it access to a much larger index. Mojeek is stronger on independence — it does not rely on any third-party search provider. DuckDuckGo also serves Microsoft ads with some query-level tracking, while Mojeek's advertising model involves no user tracking whatsoever.