ohh well, DDG also is more of a meta-search engine, getting stuff mainly from Bing, so I wouldn't go as far as rejecting FLOSS meta-search engines such as Searx but accepting DDG, see:

https://lemmy.ml/post/43595

BTW, no privacy oriented search engine with all indexes of its own will give you good results as of now, that I know of. So whether a mixture of a private oriented meta-search engine with its own indexes, FLOSS, might become a good alternative. DDG mainly as a meta-search engine doesn't even give you the control Searx provides to you, as to where to get the search results from.

Another side effect of DDG, is being a non FLOSS per profit project, based on US (with all US regulations applying).

So perhaps not the answer you were looking for, but to me, Searx, whether self hosted or using instances out there (even better if out of the extended 5 eyes, just in case), is currently what I settled to for search engine, :)

SearX https://searx.space

Just curious: why don't you consider Searx a search engine? Also would be keen to learn more about its flaws from a privacy pov. Thanks

I self-host a Whoogle instance, that can use Tor if you want, as well as redirecting search results to private-friendly alternatives (invidious, nitter, bibliogram, etc).

Why Searx would be a bad alternative? I mean, if you're looking for a FOSS, privacy respecting search engine. Why Searx would be a not for you? I know that is not a search engine, is a meta-search engine. But what's the problem with that??

Metager is pretty good. Open sourced and funded by a non-profit.

YaCy?

Infinity Decentralized, it's Self-Hosted and the main instance only indexes some sites like wikipedia, wiki how amd geeks4geeks and little others, but you can check some other instances. https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/mgpr1c/infinity_decentralized_open_source_search_engine/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

another honorable mention: monocles.de (based on searx combined with two peer-to-peer search engines)

I'm using Mojeek since it allows me to pay them using Interledger protocol. Proving if one is human is misleading. People want money so they should check whether one is paying instead. However, Mojeek search result IMAO now is terrible.