The best alternatives to Andi
Andi might not be the right fit: the price, a missing feature or a payment model you don't like. These are the closest alternatives in our catalog, ordered by rating, with the full review of each one.
Why look for a Andi alternative
First sweep. Andi is the small project of this segment and it genuinely answers the segment's question: a free search engine with no advertising, no account and no search logging, with the source named and linked in every answer. Verification was run against its live API rather than only its marketing site, returning results dated in 2026 with attribution on all of them. There is real work underneath, with intent classification by query type, recency scoring and its own page extractor, so it is not a wrapper over somebody else's model. The problems are three and none of them is about price. The first is that the default answer is not what the home page promises: instead of a multi-source synthesis by language models, what arrives is an extract from a single page, and in three of nine test queries the chosen extract did not answer the question. The second is size and focus, because the declared team went from ten people in 2023 to two, the browser extension promoted on its home page has not been updated since April 2024, and most of its 2026 posts concern neighbouring products. The third is coherence: its policy states it never uses third-party analytics while the app loads a product analytics platform with a persistent per-visitor profile, served from its own domain, although it trims the query text before sending and the whole thing can be switched off.
What its own users repeat in the August 9, 2026 sweep:
- The default answer is a single-page extract rather than the multi-source synthesis the home page advertises, and selection misfires often: in three of nine test queries the extract did not answer the question (strong theme)
- The accuracy figure on its home page comes from an external measurement run in August 2024 against the models of the time, is published in the present tense with no date, and the chart leaves out the runner-up, which was the closest rival (strong theme)
- Weak continuity signals: a two-person team against the ten declared in 2023, a browser extension untouched since April 2024 with a thousand users, a paid plan announced in September 2025 that still has no price, and recent work poured into neighbouring products (strong theme)
- Its published policy states it never uses third-party analytics while the app initialises a product analytics platform with a persistent per-visitor profile. It is proxied through its own domain, the query is trimmed and it can be disabled, but the policy and the code do not say the same thing (present theme)
Best alternatives to Andi
The paid search engine with no ads and no tracking.
A search engine with its own index and AI answers that cite sources, with ads removed for $3 a month.
What the internet says about each alternative
Kagi 4/5 · Free trial · from $5
Kagi still wins on the same ground, ad-free results and domain tuning nobody else offers, and on 30 July it finally shipped the assistant as a native iOS and Android app. What moves the verdict this week is the fine print on that assistant: the official docs admit AI usage is capped at the dollar value of your plan and that going over cuts you off until the next billing cycle, so unlimited covers searching, not asking.
Where it wins: Results with no ads and no content-farm pages, and long-term subscribers say they hardly ever need the bang shortcut back to Google Where it slips: The index is not theirs for most queries: they pay third-party providers serving Google results, and the company itself writes it wants out as soon as direct licensing becomes possible
Brave Search 3.7/5 · Free + from $3
First sweep. Brave Search is one of the few engines in the segment that does not lean on somebody else's index: its own April 2023 announcement states that it removed the last Bing API call, which accounted for around 7 per cent of results, and that every web result has come from its own index since. The AI answer layer is free and cites sources as a principle stated in its documentation, and what costs $3 a month is removing the ads the free tier does carry. The two serious problems are documented by third parties and neither is about price. The first is the long tail, where its own help pages admit in writing that results are not refined enough for every query and offer a fallback that consults Google, available only inside its browser. The second is reputational and dates to 2023, when copyright analysts documented that its crawler does not identify itself in a way a publisher can block, an accusation that underpins a News Corp countersuit filed in July 2026. It is also worth knowing that the index is fed partly by browsing history contributed voluntarily by users of its browser.
Where it wins: The in-house index is a verifiable fact rather than a marketing promise, and it is what separates this product from most so-called AI search engines, which are a writing layer over results rented from Google or Bing Where it slips: The index falls short on the long tail and the product's own help pages admit it in writing, with a fallback that queries Google as the official fix, available only inside its browser
Comparison table
| Tool | Price | Free trial | Platforms | Rating | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andi | Free | No | Web, Chrome | VisitAndi (opens in a new tab) | |
| Kagi | Free trial · from $5 | Yes | Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Chrome | VisitKagi (opens in a new tab) | |
| Brave Search | Free + from $3 | No | Web | VisitBrave Search (opens in a new tab) |
Still unsure? Read the full review of Andi?