Brave Search or Qwant: which search engine should you choose?

“What about Qwant?” The question comes up every time I talk about leaving Google Search. A French search engine, hosted in France: many would like the answer to stop there. My recommendation is still Brave Search, the same as in the comparison with Google. Qwant has real arguments, and you’ll see that they carry weight. They just aren’t enough to reverse the verdict.

The match in one table

Criterion	Brave Search	Qwant
Price	Free (ad-free premium at $3/month)	Free
Index	Its own, independent of Google and Bing	Its own, combined with Bing’s
Advertising profile	None	None, no advertising cookies
Company	American	French, hosted in France, GDPR
Children’s version	No	Qwant Junior, filtered
Migration	Change the default search engine, one minute	Same, one minute

What Brave Search does better

The independence of its index, and that’s the heart of the matter. Where do alternative engines’ results come from? From Bing most often, or relayed from Google. Qwant itself combines its index with Bing’s. Brave Search crawls the web on its own. Your searches pass through neither Google nor Microsoft, and no one builds an advertising profile from them.

Results are relevant, unfiltered, identical for everyone. It’s the engine I use daily, and the predicted frustration almost never came. Two reservations to stay fair: the index is less complete than Google’s on very specific queries, and the company is American. That last point is exactly where Qwant scores.

What Qwant does better

Sovereignty, no contest. Qwant was born as a French alternative to Google, in the name of European digital sovereignty. French company, hosting in France, GDPR: no one else ticks those three boxes in the category. Add an interface designed in French, no advertising cookies, no search history kept. And for families, Qwant Junior filters out violent and pornographic content, a real service the competition doesn’t offer. If your children are doing their first searches, that argument carries a lot of weight.

It’s only fair to be honest about the limits. Results are sometimes less relevant, and Google’s advanced features are missing. Above all, the CNIL, France’s data protection authority, issued Qwant a formal warning in February 2025: user data was going to Microsoft in pseudonymized form, not anonymized. A sovereign engine that relies on Bing: the paradox is worth knowing before you choose.

Verdict

Choose Brave Search if you want the most independent engine on the market, with no advertising profile and no dependence on Bing. It’s my first choice, the one I recommend in the book, and the fastest move in the whole de-Googling journey.

Choose Qwant if the French option comes first: a national company, hosting in France and the GDPR as a safety net. It’s also the right setting for the children’s computer, thanks to Qwant Junior. You still come out far ahead of Google.

Either way, one minute in your browser settings is enough. The complete walkthrough is in the guide to leaving Google Search. The detailed profiles of Brave Search and Qwant are waiting in the search engines catalog. And if you’re still unsure about the order of your priorities, the diagnostic helps you decide.