Qwant vs Google Search
Qwant is a European alternative to Google Search — same search & internet use case, built under EU data-protection law.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Get fast, reliable answers with a search engine that doesn't store or sell your data. Hosted in Europe for enhanced privacy.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- GDPR by default
- Yes
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- Yes
Google Search by Google.
- Jurisdiction
- US
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
About Qwant
Qwant is a French privacy-first search engine that returns results for web, news, images, and shopping without tracking searches, building user profiles, or filtering results based on history. Unlike Google or Bing, Qwant never stores your search queries, never builds behavioural profiles, and serves only contextual ads — the same ad shown to all searchers of a given term, never targeted to individuals.
Qwant Chat brings AI-powered conversational search into the interface alongside traditional results, and Flash Answer surfaces instant structured answers for common queries. Infrastructure is hosted in France, with Qwant maintaining an independent European index and transparent ranking algorithms that prioritise relevance over engagement signals.
Key benefits:
- No tracking — searches are never stored, no user profile is ever built
- No filter bubble — results ranked by relevance, not personalised engagement history
- Contextual ads only — based on the query, never on personal data or history
- AI Chat integration for conversational answers alongside web search results
- News, images, and shopping search verticals in addition to web results
- Qwant Junior — a filtered search mode for children's safe browsing
- EU-hosted — all infrastructure in France, no data transferred outside Europe
Qwant is headquartered at 42 Avenue de la Porte de Clichy, Paris, France, operating its infrastructure on French servers fully subject to GDPR. It provides no data to U.S. tech companies, conducts no cross-site tracking, and has received backing from the French government as part of its digital sovereignty strategy.
Founded in Paris in 2013, Qwant is the leading European alternative to Google Search — built on independent EU infrastructure without U.S. Big Tech dependencies.
Why choose Qwant over Google Search?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Google Search is headquartered in US, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes — the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Qwant removes that overhead. As a France-based provider, it operates natively under GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors — health, public administration, finance — that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single non-EU jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.