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Brave Search vs YaCy: catalog facts
Brave Search	YaCy
Free Free to use in the browser.	Free Free and open source software.
Web, Browser extension	Web, Self-hosted
Own independent index instead of proxying another engine No profiling of users	Decentralized peer-to-peer web index with no central operator Can run as a private crawler or intranet search portal
An independent index can have gaps compared with the largest engines AI answers can be inaccurate and should be checked	Pre-compiled packages are not built regularly; compiling from source is recommended Peer-to-peer results are less complete than major web search engines
Web application, Browser extension	Downloadable app, Self-hosted
Closed source	Open source
License not stated	License: GPL-2.0
No account needed	No account needed
Needs internet	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 2, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.