Ecosia profile

Search advertising and other commercial services support its operations and stated environmental mission.

Ecosia publishes monthly financial reports showing search income, costs and climate investment.

100% of profits go to climate action, after the costs of running the business.

Nonprofit or mission-locked structure; no ordinary public equity valuation.

Search advertising funds operations and the environmental mission while independent European search infrastructure develops.

Ecosia offers AI-assisted search and overviews through its search partnerships. Its European search infrastructure partnership with Qwant is another part of the product’s development.

Ecosia works with search providers and the European Search Perspective venture; AI search includes technology supplied through these arrangements.

Ecosia’s help material says searches involve terms, IP and technical information and describes different IP-anonymisation periods for Ecosia, Microsoft and consented Google results. It offers personalisation choices. A privacy-oriented intermediary does not erase the separate processing of the search supplier.

Published financial and environmental reports provide a way to inspect how the mission is funded.

Review the reports and AI settings; the business commits profits to climate action rather than promising that every penny of revenue buys trees.

20/25 points

Ecosia explains both its own privacy choices and the role of search partners. It says it does not build a cross-platform profile or use search data to personalise ads elsewhere. The partner handling is a material limitation rather than something to hide behind its environmental mission.

20/25 points

Ecosia’s help material says searches involve terms, IP and technical information and describes different IP-anonymisation periods for Ecosia, Microsoft and consented Google results. It offers personalisation choices. A privacy-oriented intermediary does not erase the separate processing of the search supplier.

15/25 points

A mission statement and the quality of an individual search result should be judged separately.

20/25 points

Review the reports and AI settings; the business commits profits to climate action rather than promising that every penny of revenue buys trees.

Higher-scoring options for a comparable use:

• DuckDuckGo — 80/100 versus 75/100

  Comparable use case: general web search

  General web search: 80/100 compared with 75/100. Privacy is the product distinction—not a requirement to abandon useful search.

  Sources (2)

  • DuckDuckGo — Trust evidencePublic primary documentation · accessed 18 October 2026
  • DuckDuckGo — official product pagePrimary product · accessed 18 October 2026

A useful result combines with the satisfaction of supporting climate action.

A browser default and familiar search habits make repeated use almost automatic.

The service asks for little behavioural change: search much as you already do.

Environmental communities and shared values make the search choice part of a collective identity.

Moving away can feel like withdrawing support from the mission, even without a conventional loyalty scheme.