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."
Some people call it a metasearch engine, I don't think it's quite accurate. When you run a search, they pull from a single main index (one that you personally select) rather than querying multiple sources and blending the results together, which is the actual defining trait of a metasearch engine. They also bundle in a bunch of additional features you wouldn't typically expect from a metasearch engine, and on top of that, they maintain and offer their own proprietary index as an option too. So I'll just call them a search engine, since that's what they call themselves.
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.
This is not meant to be an in-depth technical review of all the features Uruky offers or some comparison to another search engine. I just want to list the most important aspects that I'm personally drawn to and perhaps some people will relate and give it a try.
I am in no way affiliated with Uruky, I just think it's a good product.
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). The index is actually called Staan, and EUSP is the joint venture itself. However, since Uruky refers to it as EUSP, I will so, too.
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), have 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. Marginalia also was useful a couple of times for finding niche, less popular content.
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.
Just genuinely useful.
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. Sometimes it's useful, but most of my problems are already solved by other services. I don't need a lacluster implementation of a VPN, browser, email, maps and so on or bundled access to LLM's.
In general there's no junk anywhere on this site. It feels clean, both the search engine itself and the front page. Even the documentation and the privacy policy are plain, readable. I appreciate it.
So it feels refreshing to rediscover a search engine that focuses only search and is "light".
Paid
Uruky costs 5 eur / month. Why pay for search?
There’s a saying: "The only free cheese is in the mousetrap." I think this is largely true. Something dysfunctional has developed in the way big tech capitalized on our attention and data in exchange for "free" stuff - so much so that this has become the default way many companies operate.
That said, plenty of good has come from this arrangement. Platforms like YouTube, for instance, are arguably a net good.
But my unease doesn’t stop with surveillance capitalism. My general feeling is this: I don’t want free stuff. When you don’t pay for something (and I don’t mean only monetarily) - problems arise. Overconsumption, for one, because there’s no natural mechanism to stop you. There's also Entitlement, which you see plenty these days.
Try telling an average person to pay for their email, and they’ll look at you like you’re mad. But it doesn’t end there. People use adblockers on services like YouTube and feel they’re doing the right thing, completely forgetting that ad revenue is split with the creators. I’ve read all sorts of philosophies where people go around using services and pay nothing. I’m not here to moralize (I’m not perfect either), but it’s part of a trend.
People don’t want surveillance capitalism, but they also don’t want to pay, and they don’t want to see ads. You see it in open source too: some people forget that maintainers usually aren’t even paid to maintain their projects, yet they act as if they’re owed something. It goes on and on...
Finally, when you don't pay, there are too many options. You lose track of what matters amid the noise. Paying forces a kind of clarity - you're more likely to ask whether this thing is actually valuable to you, and theoretically, you filter out the rest. There really is a trap in too much for our minds.
So I pay for search because of those things listed above and 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.
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. Thins like showing/hiding favicons, hiding/showing search query in page title, making the header taller for mobile, making it sticky and so on... There's like 30 different things you can adjust.
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
Interview with the Engineer of Uruky, a Private Search Engine - General / Project Showcase - Privacy Guides Community really great interview that actually made me try them out.
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