nilch: Non-profit search engine with no ads, AI, or tracking.

What it does

Nilch is a search engine that indexes web pages and returns results without advertisements, artificial intelligence features, or user tracking. The engine supports DuckDuckGo bangs, a feature that lets users redirect searches to specific sites using special syntax. It is open source and freely available to use.

Who it is for

The search engine targets users frustrated with commercial search engines that monetize through ads or data collection. It appeals to privacy-conscious internet users who want search results unfiltered by machine learning ranking and to people who believe search should be a public utility rather than a revenue-generating product.

Pricing

The site does not show prices. Search is free. The engine is funded through donations.

How it stands out

Most established search engines balance user experience with commercial pressures—Google uses ads and AI, DuckDuckGo avoids tracking but still monetizes through ads and affiliate links, and Bing operates as part of Microsoft's ecosystem. Nilch removes the commercial layer entirely by adopting a non-profit model. The removal of AI from search results is deliberate; the creator views algorithmic ranking as a contamination rather than an enhancement. The open source nature allows transparency and community contribution, contrasting with the closed systems of incumbent engines.

What a founder should check

A founder building a competing search engine should verify the following:

Search quality and scale. Search engines live or die by relevance and speed. Nilch's index size, freshness, and ranking algorithm need comparison against Google and smaller players. Users will quickly abandon a engine that returns poor results, regardless of its philosophical purity.

Donation sustainability. The non-profit model depends on recurring donations from a user base. A founder should examine whether enough users care enough about privacy and ethics to fund a search engine long-term, or whether the donation pool is too shallow to support infrastructure costs at any meaningful scale.

Switching friction. Changing a search engine is low-friction for individual users but involves browser defaults, extension ecosystems, and habit. Nilch must overcome the network effects and convenience advantages of Google's dominance even if it solves the privacy problem better.

Thinking of building something like this?

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