Google processes 8.5 billion searches per day. Every single one of them feeds a profile about you — what you fear, what you buy, who you love, how you vote.
We got tired of it. So we built an alternative.
findnix.eu is now in public beta — a European meta-search engine built from scratch, hosted in Germany, with zero tracking and no data sold to anyone. Ever.
Why another search engine?
DuckDuckGo is US-based. Startpage proxies Google. Brave Search is promising but still American infrastructure. For Europeans — especially after Schrems II — that's a real problem.
We wanted something genuinely European:
- Hosted in the EU
- GDPR-native by architecture, not by checkbox
- Built on open technologies
- Not dependent on a US tech giant's goodwill
So we built it ourselves. One developer, a VPS in Germany, PHP 8.4 + MariaDB + Redis. No VC funding. No data brokers.
What findnix.eu actually does
At its core, findnix combines multiple independent search indexes (including Brave Search and our own sitemap crawler — currently 25+ million URLs) with an AI summary layer powered by Claude. Fast results, visible sources, no filter bubble.
Search tabs:
- Web, News, Science
- Images (210k+ indexed, growing daily)
- Videos (210k+ from PeerTube, ARD, UEFA and others — playable directly on findnix)
- Company search (EU business directory)
What makes it different:
🔒 Zero tracking — no behavioral profiling, no fingerprinting, no IP logging
📢 No auction ads — flat-rate only. A bakery pays the same as a corporation
🤖 AI summaries — Claude summarizes top results with sources always visible
🌍 25 EU languages — all 24 official EU languages plus Swiss German
🗺️ findnix Map — Europe-only, Leaflet + OpenStreetMap, no Google Maps
🗑️ Account deletion — one click, confirmed with password, everything gone immediately
The tech stack
For those curious about how it's built:
- Backend: PHP 8.4, no framework
- Database: MariaDB with 25M+ URLs in the main index
- Caching: Redis
- Crawler: Custom PHP sitemap crawler — processes ~150,000 URLs per run across multiple parallel instances
- AI layer: Claude (Anthropic) via API for summaries and spam filtering
- Search sources: Brave Search API + own sitemap index + Pixabay + MusicBrainz + OpenLibrary + TMDB + OpenStreetMap/Overpass
- Maps: Leaflet.js + OpenStreetMap
- Hosting: 1blu VPS, Ubuntu 24.04, Plesk
The video index alone covers 210,000+ videos from PeerTube instances across Europe, ARD Mediathek, UEFA, and more — all playable directly on findnix without leaving the site.
What's in the beta
Everything is live and testable right now:
For users:
- Search without an account
- Register free — no waitlist, no credit card
- Image reverse search (registered users)
- Points system — earn points for activity, redeem for features
- Wishlist — request features directly
For site owners:
- Submit your sitemap for free indexing
- Domain highlighting in search results
- Analytics for submitted sites
- Flat-rate advertising from €9/month
For the community:
- Donation module for EU non-profits (earn points)
- Embeddable ad widget for your own site
- Referral system
Honest about where we are
The index is still growing. Niche queries might return limited results. The AI summary works best for well-covered topics.
We're crawling new sitemaps daily. The index improves every week. If your site isn't showing up yet — submit your sitemap at findnix.eu/einreichen.php. It's free, no account needed, checked within 24 hours.
Why this matters for Europe
The EU has GDPR. It has the Digital Markets Act. It has Schrems II. But it doesn't have search infrastructure it actually controls.
Every time a European searches Google, that data flows to US servers under US law. That's a structural dependency that regulations alone can't fix — you need an alternative.
findnix.eu is our attempt. Independent, transparent, built by a single developer who believes Europe deserves better search infrastructure.
Try it
🔍 Search: findnix.eu
📝 Beta feedback: findnix.eu/beta-feedback.php
📤 Submit your site: findnix.eu/einreichen.php
✉️ Contact: findnix@findnix.eu
Use code BETA2026 in the wishlist notes to flag yourself as a founding beta tester — we give founding testers priority on every feature request.
Built in Europe, for Europe. No VC. No tracking. No excuses.
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