Uruky is a pretty great search engine
I've been using Uruky for a couple of months now and I feel I should write a bit about it. It's a "private search engine focused on personal search customization, not an ecosystem."
When I first discovered it, I felt like it checked most of the boxes I was hoping for. I wanted a search engine that:
- Had a Google / Bing independent search index
- Was Europe-based (or at least not from the US)
- Was Privacy respecting
- Was Light
- Was Sustainable (paid)
Here I will go over each point.
Google / Bing independent index
2-3 years ago when I decided I want to switch off of Google / Bing I was presented with a lot of options - Ecosia, Qwant, Duckduckgo, Kagi, Swisscows, Mojeek, Brave and some others. But only a few of them were completely independent of Bing / Google. Some of them not only relied on them for their index, but also used their advertising networks (although anonymised user data). At that time only Mojeek and Brave had independent, somewhat usable for regular search, indexes.
Mojeek and Brave at that time were... not that good. The gap between Bing (not even gonna talk about Google) and these 2 search engines was quite enormous. Therefore I concluded that the only option was to use Bing / Google through a private wrapper that hid your user data from upstream.
So I went with Ecosia / DDG. I used them for a long time. Ecosia used Google and it's ad network under the hood, while DDG - mainly Bing. Then in 2024 Ecosia and Qwant announced that they were teaming up to create an European search index (EUSP). At the time, I thought it was a noble effort, but which will end up going nowhere. Perhaps it will be a complementary, small index that will leverage them to be a bit less dependent on Google / Bing but surely will not replace them.
Fast forward to 2026, I came across xprivo. They launched their own search engine and they used only EUSP as their main index. I tried them out briefly and was pleasantly surprised that EUSP was pretty darn good.
I'm telling this story because EUSP, when combined with other smaller indexes available in Uruky (including their own), almost completely replaced Google / Bing for me. Here's the whole list of the providers the they use and how they differ. Alongside EUSP, I'm also genuinely surprised with Linkup. There were numerous occasions when it found me things Google failed to. It's surprisingly robust.
I'm not necessarily against COMPLETELY avoiding Google and Microsoft, however, there is something to be said about the increasing dependence on big tech products and services in our everyday lives, especially for Europeans. There are obviously numerous of ethical and privacy considerations, as well.
I still reach for them from time to time, but it comprises only a small fraction of my total searches nowadays. In other words, i am no longer dependent on them. Uruky even has a provider Serper, which is basically just a private wrapper over Google, if you still need to reach for it.
This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I like Uruky. I have real agency of the indexes that I use there. This is different from Kagi - in which you don't. A couple of years back they were in a controversy regarding the use of Yandex and Brave indexes. At some point they also removed all mentions of specific external indexes that they use. DuckDuckGo also used Yandex, though they stopped shortly after the invasion of Ukraine (respect). My point is, there's lots of valid reasons why you would want to avoid sending money to a certain service. With Uruky you have that choice. With a lot of the other search engines - you don't.
On top of giving you access to Serper, they also allow you to configure up to 3 web fallback engines. So in case you do a search and don't find what you're looking for in Uruky's available indexes, you can set up to have DuckDuckGo, Brave search or whatever else to be available with a single button click slightly below the search box. It will then search the exact same query in that other search engine.
Very convenient and realistic about it's users' needs.
Sidenote: I think Brave has improved considerably since I last tried it.
European (or not from the US)
As a European, I've grown increasingly concerned about the direction the US has taken lately. The threat to potentially seize Greenland by force was probably the breaking point for me, but it's part of a broader pattern that's hard to ignore. So I've started being more mindful about avoiding American products where I can - it's the LEAST that I can do.
This is one of the reasons why I held back paying for Kagi. The other one being that they use Yandex as one of their providers(I mentioned this already).
Many European companies claim to be "EU alternatives" to Big Tech, yet still rely on US infrastructure like cloud and payment services. Uruky, however, claims 100% independence (Quote from Uruky dev (Bruno)):
Currently we use Hetzner for the server (app, database, index, etc.), and Mollie for payments. Our search providers are also listed in the FAQ and are all EU-based, and we're upfront that Serper is the only "contentious" one we've decided to allow (UK, proxying Google), but isn't the default. Hopefully our choices are clear.
Vote with your wallet.
Privacy respecting
There's no account in Uruky in the traditional sense. No passwords, no emails. You click signup and an account will be created with a random 16 digit name, which you will use to log in. You then top up that account via physical cash, bank transfer, card, crypto, vouchers or other methods.
An "account" can act basically like a burner phone. When the top-up expires, you can export your settings and rotate to a new one with like 2 button presses. I think (not sure) non-topped-up "accounts" get deleted after some time.
No search history is logged. No linking of billing identity to your account.
Read: Threat models: when Uruky is not enough - Uruky
From FAQ:
We don't store any personal or identifiable data in the database. Our user database only has an account number (like Mullvad), the timestamp of the account creation, and the ID + timestamp of the last payment (for the first 15 days, to allow refunds in the first 14 days). Mollie will keep more information (for legal reasons), but we won't have it connected to our database or your account after those 15 days.
User sessions (to prevent abuse and DDOS attacks) are stored in the database for up to 30 days and only include device type (desktop, mobile), to aid you in identifying them. You can delete these sessions at any time.
Signup and failed login attempts are stored in the database for up to 30 days (to prevent abuse and DDOS attacks) and only include the (hashed) IP address of origin and the number of failed attempts.
Light
When talking about "lightness" in search engines, the first thing I'll mention is Generative AI.
I value their decision to not include any Generative AI into their search engine. This is unlike basically every other service out there.
Now I'm not an absolutist when it comes to LLM's (large language models). It's causing A LOT of issues and there's a lot of nonsense around it. At the same time, I believe it can be a useful tool and can be used responsibly. But I don't feel like search engines fit into responsible usage framework here - their usefulness doesn't counterbalance the sheer wastefulness of them having to go through thousands of input token to answer a question that you could have found yourself with little effort. They have to crawl through multiple sites to find your answer and some of them will not have it. And think of how many people do stupid searches that a simple wikipedia sidebar can answer? How many people use something like Google every day? This is why I don't appreciate search engines that push them down our throats.
It also personally annoys me when they are opt-out by default, instead of opt-in. As it means every time I turn on Incognito mode or clear cookies (which is every time i close my browser) - these LLM responses will appear, until I turn them off again.
Additionally, they disconnect people from the sites where they get their information from, form bad habits of over-reliance on them and create unique problems, such as : Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search.
The implementations where you have a separate chat interface and are able to use standard LLM models to do web search I find even more useless and wasteful. Perplexity was built on this, Ecosia, xPrivo, Kagi all have such a "AI Chat" features and I just never used it. LLM's perform worse the more input tokens you feed into them. Going through search results requires a lot of tokens. Not to mention, people typically don't use small models in such chats. And at the end of it, you have to fact check everything anyways as they do make stuff up constantly (especially when they do web searches).
A big part of using LLM's responsibly includes being aware of the monetary and environmental cost of them. In a search engine, however, this cost is almost always hidden from us. I just don't need them.
Another thing is: additional services.
I'm not arguing against search engines that provide extra "services", potentially bundling everything into one subscription price. It's fine if you find value in that. But personally I don't. Most often this means bundling in LLM access (Kagi, xPrivo). DuckDuckGo offers VPN's and some other things... But yeah... I don't want them. I just want search.
So it feels refreshing to rediscover a search engine that focuses only search and goes against the grain by NOT offering Generative AI.
Paid
Uruky costs 5 eur / month. Why pay for search?
There is a saying that I've heard: "The only free cheese is the one on the mouse trap".
I think this is largely true. There is something a bit dysfunctional about the way big tech was able to capitalize our attention and data, in exchange of giving you "free" stuff, to the point that now this has became a default way a lot of companies operate.
That being said, there have been a lot of good stuff that came from this sort of contract. Platforms like Youtube, for instance, many will agree is most likely a net-good.
At the same time I believe there's a dark side to all of this as well. It causes overconsumption, entitlement, desensitization and similar problems. I won't even mention what it does to our privacy and what these companies get away with.
I don't want to go into a lecture here debating whether it's overall good or bad that things are this way. But I am moving away from this model, slowly.
So I pay for search because that's the sustainable thing to do. The other alternatives are: selling your attention (watching ads) or selling your data. Actually, you usually do both at the same time. I choose to pay.
With this in mind, I'm not demeaning people who don't do this. It's not easy to break out of this pattern of consumption, and I'm not perfect either - maybe there's no need to be. But I try to stay mindful of the idea that if you're not paying, you're usually the product. I use that to filter out the inessential from what actually provides real value to me.
I believe Uruky is one of those products. I decided to try them after reading Privacy Dad's interview. I hope they succeed in their mission.
Other stuff
Some other small things that may be useful to know:
Customization
In settings, there's a quite a lot of customization options. More than I expected.
Features
It has most features you would expect from a modern search engine.
Domain boosting and exclusions, AI Slop and malicious domain labeling / filtering, removing UTM parameters, URL rewrites, export settings, incognito URL, Kagi/DDG bangs, and so on...
In general, I feel the pace of improvement is really great, considering the size of the team.
Only one thing I'm waiting for are search lenses.
Free trial
They don’t do free trials in order to prevent abuse. So you do have to trust and pay that 5 eur to try them out.
Relevant discussion links
Uruky search engine (paid service) - General - Privacy Guides Community
Independent investigation on Uruky.com with report - General - Privacy Guides Community
Why I Use Uruky, a Private Search Engine - General / Project Showcase - Privacy Guides Community
Show HN: Uruky (EU-based Kagi alternative) now has Image Search and URL Rewrites | Hacker News
Welcome to Uruky, AlternativeTo's new official partner! | AlternativeTo
Also check out:
Apply for small Open Source Sponsorships - Uruky
At the bottom of the page (footer) there's also comparisons that they do with other popular search engines. Check them out, for example : DuckDuckGo alternative - Uruky
Thanks for reading ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ