My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
I've been working on a little open source [1] search engine, nilch. I noticed that nearly all well known search engines, including the alternative ones, tend to be run by companies of various sizes with the goal to make money, so they either fill your results with ads or charge you money, and I dislike this because search is the backbone of the internet and should not be commercial, so it runs in a not-for-profit style and aims to survive on donations. Additionally I'm personally really sick of AI in my search results so I got rid of that, and I wanted DuckDuckGo bangs so it supports all of…
My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs launched on December 29, 2025 with 199 votes, #131 of 11,628 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Nilch is an open source search engine run as a not-for-profit and funded by donations. It removes ads and artificial intelligence from search results while supporting DuckDuckGo bangs for site-specific searches. The engine prioritizes user privacy and currently uses the Brave search API, with plans to build its own independent index in the future.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
I've been working on a little open source [1] search engine, nilch. I noticed that nearly all well known search engines, including the alternative ones, tend to be run by companies of various sizes with the goal to make money, so they either fill your results with ads or charge you money, and I dislike this because…
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