I’m stuck with what to choose. I prioritise speed and privacy
I guess i’m doing pros and cons for all of them now:
Startpage Pros - uses google’s search results and anonymous view, eu based Cons - Bought my an ad company
Qwant Pros - eu based Cons - lots of ads, sometimes a bug where it is in france
DDG pros - faster than the other two, Cons - https://techrights.org/o/2020/07/02/ddg-privacy-abuser-in-disguise/
Not the OG, but I tried instances for awhile. After about two months I decided to self host it. The best instances for testing, imo, would be ones that have IPv6 on and nearest to your location for the host. They are aggregators so its tracking will be limited to the host of it. Even then, it’s a worthwhile test but self hosting can be as easy as installing docker, making a docker hub account, and pulling the prebuilt searxng image and going to the set port. That’s easiest way if you have reservation about data, but don’t have the time to configure the whole thing.