Practical reference
Search Tool Reference
A plain-English comparison of 18 search and discovery tools. Use it to narrow the field, then open the individual profile before you choose.
How to use this page
Start with what you are trying to find. Then compare cost, source visibility and the main limitation. The “last checked” date matters because search products change quickly.
Quick comparison
You do not need to compare every column. For most people, four questions are enough: What does it search? Is it free? Can I inspect the sources? What is the catch?
| Tool | What it searches | Cost | Sources | Best for | Main catch | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | AI answers with web citations | Free; paid Pro/Max tiers | Inline citations | Researching a current question and following the cited sources | An answer can still misread or overstate a source | 2026-09-09 |
| Kagi | General web search | Paid subscription; limited trial | Normal result links | People willing to pay for a cleaner everyday search experience | You are paying for search, and it is not an answer engine first | 2026-09-09 |
| Google Scholar | Scholarly papers, books and citations | Free | Publication and citation links | Broad academic discovery and citation chasing | Coverage is broad but not transparent or exhaustive | 2026-08-23 |
| Semantic Scholar | Scientific papers and citation relationships | Free | Paper and citation records | Finding related scientific work and quickly scanning citation context | Not a substitute for a subject database when completeness matters | 2026-08-23 |
| PubMed | Biomedical and health literature | Free | Citation, abstract and publisher links | Biomedical literature searching | Focused on biomedicine; full text is not always in PubMed itself | 2026-08-23 |
| DuckDuckGo | General web search | Free | Normal result links | Everyday web search when privacy is the main priority | Results can differ from Google and it relies partly on outside sources | 2026-08-23 |
| Brave Search | General web search | Free; optional Premium | Normal result links | Private everyday search with more index independence | Smaller ecosystem than Google and some queries may feel less complete | 2026-09-09 |
| GitHub Search | Code, repositories, issues and GitHub content | Free with GitHub access | Repository, file and code context | Finding code and projects already hosted on GitHub | It does not search code outside the GitHub ecosystem | 2026-08-23 |
| Sourcegraph | Code across many repositories and hosts | Enterprise plans | Repository, file and symbol context | Large organizations searching across many repositories | Overkill for a person who only needs to search one GitHub repository | 2026-09-09 |
| Google Lens | Objects, products, places and visually similar images | Free | Linked visual and web results | Identifying what is in a photo or finding similar products/objects | Not designed mainly to trace the oldest copy of an image | 2026-08-23 |
| TinEye | Exact and altered copies of an image | Free web search; commercial APIs | Matched pages and image copies | Tracing where the same image appears online | Usually weaker for finding merely similar-looking objects or scenes | 2026-08-23 |
| Pinterest Lens | Visual inspiration and related products | Free account | Pins and product links | Finding style, decor, fashion and visual inspiration | Best inside Pinterest; weak for provenance or exact-source tracing | 2026-08-23 |
| Indeed | Broad job listings | Free for job seekers | Job and employer links | Searching a large pool of conventional job listings | Duplicates and stale listings can appear; always verify with the employer | 2026-08-23 |
| LinkedIn Jobs | Jobs connected to companies and professional networks | Free; optional Premium | Job, company and profile links | Jobs where company context and your network matter | Works best when you maintain a LinkedIn profile; not every employer posts there | 2026-08-23 |
| Wellfound | Startup jobs | Free for job seekers | Job and company links | Startup and early-stage company roles | Narrower than broad job boards outside the startup market | 2026-08-23 |
| Google Shopping | Products and merchants | Free | Merchant and product links | Comparing sellers, products and prices before opening the merchant site | Displayed price is discovery information; verify final price and terms with the seller | 2026-09-09 |
| Wayback Machine | Archived versions of websites | Free | Archived capture URLs | Seeing what a webpage looked like in the past | Coverage is uneven; not every page or date was captured | 2026-08-23 |
| You.com | Web search and research APIs | Free allowance; usage-based API pricing | Source URLs and cited API answers | Building search, extraction or research into an app or agent | More developer-facing than a normal consumer search engine | 2026-09-09 |
Business model and privacy angle
This is deliberately a short description, not a privacy score. If privacy is central to your choice, read the tool's own privacy policy and our individual profile before deciding.
| Tool | Business/privacy model | Recent note |
|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | Account-based AI search service; not positioned as privacy-first | Plans rechecked: Standard, Pro, Max and Education Pro are current individual tiers. |
| Kagi | Subscription-funded search; positioned around no ads and user control | Pricing rechecked: Starter $5, Professional $10 and Ultimate $25 per month. |
| Google Scholar | Google service; not positioned as a privacy-first product | — |
| Semantic Scholar | Free research service from Ai2; not positioned as privacy-first | — |
| PubMed | Free U.S. National Library of Medicine service | — |
| DuckDuckGo | Privacy-focused search; does not build personal search profiles | — |
| Brave Search | Privacy-focused search with its own web index; Premium removes ads | Premium price rechecked: $3/month or $29.99/year. |
| GitHub Search | Part of GitHub; account/platform search rather than privacy-first search | — |
| Sourcegraph | Enterprise developer software designed to connect private/public code | Current Code Search availability rechecked on Enterprise Starter and Enterprise. |
| Google Lens | Google visual-search service; not positioned as privacy-first | — |
| TinEye | Reverse-image service with commercial API products | — |
| Pinterest Lens | Pinterest platform feature tied to its content graph | — |
| Indeed | Job marketplace funded largely by employer products and advertising | — |
| LinkedIn Jobs | Professional network with paid recruiting and Premium products | — |
| Wellfound | Startup recruiting marketplace | — |
| Google Shopping | Google shopping/discovery service built around merchant data and listings | Merchant-price and checkout-verification guidance rechecked. |
| Wayback Machine | Nonprofit Internet Archive service | — |
| You.com | Developer/API product with usage-based pricing | API pricing/credits and current Search API guidance rechecked. |
About blank recent notes: a blank means we have not added a specific change note since the last check. It does not mean the product has not changed.
Where the information comes from
Each row is based on the first-party sources linked from the corresponding Searches.com profile. These are product facts and practical descriptions, not performance scores. “Sources” describes what the tool exposes to the user; it does not guarantee that every source is correct or complete.
Download or reuse the table
The CSV and JSON downloads use the same plain-English fields shown here. If you reuse the data, keep the last-checked dates with it so readers can see how fresh each row is.