12 Best Search Engine Startups in 2024

Every year, new startups pull to the forefront of their industry through exciting innovation and industry-disrupting business models. We’ve rounded up the most exciting search engine startups of 2024 that startup-lovers, investors, and aspiring entrepreneurs should follow. 

Disclaimer: With so many exciting startups launching and growing worldwide, we aren’t able to cover them all. Furthermore, the startups that are listed below are not officially ranked and are listed in no particular order.

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Funding: Pre-seed, $610,800

Renoon connects socially aware fashionista users with platforms and brands that combine sustainability and style in equal measures. The app aims to create a community and space in which those who love fashion can indulge their passion while simultaneously making their intentions around supporting sustainable and ethical brands a reality.

Location: London, United Kingdom
Funding: Pre-seed, £1.2 Million

HolidayFox is a digital marketplace offering bespoke holiday packages in UK destinations. The site provides access to every element required for the perfect holiday in the United Kingdom, from accommodation to activities and even all-important babysitting services. The search engine component of the site allows for personalization and searches by location or activity.

Location: Unknown
Funding: Seed, $3,100

inFlight.travel harnesses the power of AI to create a super search engine for travel bookings across the world. The platform connects a wide range of service providers on a single platform, giving users the opportunity to make all their travel arrangements with just a few clicks.

Location: Berlin, Germany
Funding: Series A, €19.6 Million

Xayn is an internet search and discovery app that provides personalized results with levels of privacy protection that will impress even the most security-conscious of internet users. The platform allows for web and discovery feed searches as well as collation of content collections.

Location: Berlin, Germany
Funding: Grant, €15,000

Ecosia is a search engine startup that is taking ethical online browsing to the next level. The platform not only offers enhanced levels of privacy for users but also uses its advertising revenue to fight deforestation by planting trees in affected areas. The startup also recently partnered with US-based privacy-oriented browser Brave.

Location: Palo Alto, California
Funding: Series A, $45 Million

You.com is an innovative private search engine that summarizes the web for users. The platform describes itself as a "do engine" rather than a search engine, as it seeks to empower users to get things done rather than just browse. As seems to be key with new search engine startups, it also focuses on privacy and does not target its users for ads.

Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: Series D, $334.2 Million

Algolia was originally developed in France and provides a search-as-a-service product. By harnessing AI, Algolia provides a wide range of industries with smart search facilities for their websites. Results are real-time and delivered in less than 100 milliseconds.

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Funding: Pre-seed, €210,000

Bluetick founder, Koen Aarns, identified an international niche in the legaltech space after interviewing 100 lawyers. An overriding need presented itself for a search engine that could make legal research easier and more seamless, and Bluetick was born. The platform uses natural language processing (NLP) to ensure that the legal community can easily find links between cases, policies, and precedents using simple search terms.

Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Funding: Convertible Note, $436,100

While Kipwise may officially be headquartered in Estonia, its true location is as international and untethered as that of its three founders — and this is precisely the basis of their offering. The AI-based knowledge management system with search engine functionality was developed in 2018 as remote work became more common, and businesses expressed a need for streamlined internal knowledge systems.

Location: New York, New York
Funding: Seed, $3.1 Million

Snackable AI is a search engine for audio and video content. Originally built as a business-to-consumer (B2C) concept in response to the explosion of audio and video podcast content, the platform has since evolved to include a business-to-business (B2B) offering. In its current iteration, the company uses its technology to provide marketing insights to brands by searching audio content online and converting these insights into actionable data.

Location: Cologne, Germany
Funding: Venture-Series Unknown, €14.7 Million

Crowdfox combines the simplicity of an online shopping platform with price-checking functionality across hundreds of vendors and provides a marketplace on which vendors can sell at no cost to them. Its stated intention is to be a fair and inexpensive alternative to some of the other giants in the e-commerce industry while also providing buyers with added tech functionality.

Location: Cardiff, United Kingdom
Funding: Equity crowdfunding, $1.3 Million

Carsnip.com is an intelligent car search engine that started out with its focus solely in the UK, but has since spread its reach to international dealers as well. The platform removes the middleman click drain from the car sales equation by connecting buyers directly with dealers. Buyers get straight-from-the-dealer pricing, and sellers pay only for the clicks their ads get — not for the placement itself.

Recommended: Check out our full list of the hottest startups to watch!