I've been uaing my own selfhosted searxng instance. Absolutely love it.

searXNG

with a lot of "backends". I like how it aggregates the results from multiple engines, at least for my searches they turn out consistently more relevant when using any single search.

Duck Duck works for me. I use the "Disable Ai" addon (libreoffice) to remove most of the useless stuff. I've also tried Ecosia, but the lack of option for chronological results is a big No for me.

Currently using https://www.qwant.com/

It's French, they are trying to create an european search index together with german Ecosia.

https://uruky.com/

You can try Kagi for free, no CC required.

I know you mentioned having tried it but my experience with DDG has been pretty good and it's what I use (edit to add that I'm not doubting your experience with it has been poor and this isn't intended to sound flippant).

I see Kagi come up a lot. I don't trust engines like Kagi not to link my payment data with my search history, personally. They're a US company, so consider what that means in the current state of the world and privacy. I haven't deeply investigated the validity of it, but the Kagi CEO allegedly harassed a journalist (minor edit, a blogger) who had a critical take on their service, and supposedly they were founded as - you guessed it - an AI company.

And sure, DDG is a US company, too. But they don't really have anything personally identifying to link my searches back to me. I can accept the ads (though I have uBlock), which are only contextually targeted based on search keywords. I don't think I'd use their browser or extensions, which would have a much more privileged place in my "tech stack", but for search it does well enough.

Kagi has a free trial.

Brave is run by a POS.

after a similar path that you took, I now use Metager.org, a privacy respecting meta search engine. You pay for your search requests, but it's very, very cheap since it is run by a nonprofit (around a eurocent/search depending on settings). They integrate a lot of smaller search indexes, and you can choose to integrate braves and googles index if you wish. You can blacklist webpages too, and the source is FOSS.

If you aren't paying for it, you are the product. I pay for Kagi and I am very happy with the results and tools they develop.

I have a Kagi subscription and very happy with it.

Isn't there a new European thing?

https://www.searchenginemap.com/