Andi Search

Yes — Andi is 100% free, ad-free, and private. There is no paid tier, no watermark, no usage cap for normal humans, and no login required to use it. Andi funds development through research grants, API licensing, and enterprise partnerships rather than advertising. The company's positioning is explicitly anti-surveillance search — no query logging, no user tracking, and no ad targeting, which distinguishes it from Google and even some AI search competitors.

Google returns a list of links with AI summaries layered on top. Andi returns a conversational answer first — synthesized from the best sources — with links underneath for deeper exploration. It also has Summarize and Explain buttons on every result that give you a 200-word summary or plain-language explanation of any page without clicking through. The experience is closer to chatting with a smart friend than scrolling a search engine results page.

Andi publishes an internal benchmark showing 87% factual accuracy on its test set, which it claims beats Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity on the same questions. Real-world accuracy varies by query type — Andi is strong on general knowledge, how-to questions, and summaries, and weaker on very recent news or highly local queries. For anything important you should still verify with the source links Andi provides underneath every answer.

No. Andi explicitly does not log or track searches — this is one of the core promises of the product. There are no user profiles, no personalized results, no retargeting, and no advertising. For users moving off Google specifically because of privacy concerns, Andi is one of the few AI search engines that doesn't rely on tracking as a business model.

Yes. Andi has native iOS and Android apps in addition to the web interface, and it can be set as a default search engine in most browsers including Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. The mobile experience is optimized for chat-style queries with voice input, image search, and shareable result cards. Desktop apps for macOS and Windows are also available via WebCatalog for users who want a standalone window.

Yes. The Andi AI Search API gives developers access to an index of 14 billion pages with two modes: Fast (sub-second retrieval) and Deep (with AI summaries). Pricing is available on request. It's a smaller option than Exa or Brave Search API but is attractive for developers who want privacy-respecting search inside their own AI products.

They're optimized for different things. Perplexity is a polished research tool with follow-up threads, Pro mode, file upload, and a paid tier at $20/month with GPT-4 and Claude models inside. Andi is free, ad-free, and aggressively private, but has fewer features and a smaller underlying model budget. For quick fact-finding and privacy-conscious search, Andi wins.

Andi is built by a small independent team backed by Y Combinator. It won PCMag's Best Free AI Search Engine award three years in a row through 2026, which is unusual for a product of its size — most awards go to well-funded incumbents. The company's differentiation strategy is simple: stay free, stay private, stay fast, and out-execute the big search engines on answer quality for ordinary questions.