shouldiuse.io

Report

Should I Use Ecosia?

ecosia.org·Analyzed 20 hours ago··Based on 12 sources

The search engine that plants trees

Worth it

Worth it

Switch if you want a free, eco-friendly default search and can accept Bing-backed result quality.

Free search engine that plants trees with ad profits; great guilt-free default, but results ride on Bing.

Confidence: Medium

15M

Active users

Worldwide, per 2025 profile

250M

Trees planted

Per Ecosia, 2025

€43.2M

Annual revenue

2025, per Wikipedia

304

Trustpilot reviews

Mostly positive

Value for money5

Free forever; profits fund tree planting

Ease of use4

Simple switch; beginner-friendly apps and extension

Feature depth3

Bing-backed results; limited advanced capabilities

Security posture4

Clean UpGuard report; no CVEs filed

Pros

  • Completely free; funded by ads, not subscriptions.10
  • 100% of profits go to tree planting; not-for-profit steward ownership.⁴
  • States it does not sell user data; collects minimally.
  • 15M users and 250M trees planted — mission with real scale.
  • Clean security record: no CVEs listed, UpGuard reports no vulnerabilities.⁸

Cons

  • Results are Bing-powered, not an independent index.11
  • Users report the companion browser is poor quality.
  • AI features alienate users seeking AI-free search.
  • Privacy page says partners may build advertising profiles.⁵
  • Search quality judged 'fine', not best-in-class.12

Gotchas

  • mediumAd-funded: some partner profiling of your usage occurs despite privacy marketing.⁵
  • mediumNo independent index — Bing quality gaps and outages hit Ecosia too.11
  • mediumBrowser app gets harsh reviews; prefer the website or extension.
  • lowIndividual support is self-serve troubleshooting guides only.

Best for

  • Everyday personal web search
  • Eco-conscious users
  • De-Googlers
  • Companies switching default search for CSR

Not for

  • Work searches needing Google-grade accuracy
  • Privacy maximalists — ad partner profiling still exists
  • Teams needing admin controls or support SLAs
  • Users wanting zero AI in search results

Companies that use it

Pricing

Free

€0

  • Full web search
  • Browser and mobile apps
  • Tree planting funded by ads

Security

No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.

What users say

Users find Ecosia good enough for daily search and value the tree-planting mission, while criticizing the browser app and added AI features.

“I recently switched from Duckduckgo to Ecosia.”
— Reddit, r/Ecosia
“its perfect, except the browser is absolute garba...”
— Reddit, r/ClimateOffensive
“They use bing i think as a search engine but they sta...”
— Reddit, r/degoogle

Alternatives

Compare Ecosia with each alternative.

Brave Search

Independent search index with strong privacy; no Bing dependency.

Full analysis

Based on 45 public sources; several Reddit and Quora snippets were truncated.

Sources

  1. Question: Is Ecosia any good? — Redditreddit.com
    review
  2. Ecosia Trustpilot reviewstrustpilot.com
    review
  3. Ecosia — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
    news
  4. Ecosia official siteecosia.org
    official
  5. Ecosia privacy policyecosia.org
    official
  6. Case study: E.ONcompanies.ecosia.org
    official
  7. Case study: TalkTalkcompanies.ecosia.org
    official
  8. Ecosia Vendor Risk Report — UpGuardupguard.com
    security
  9. Ecosia Android CVE scan — Appaloosascout.appaloosa.io
    security
  10. Ecosia: Search to plant trees — Google Playplay.google.com
    official
  11. Sierra Club on Ecosia and Microsoft Bingsierraclub.org
    news
  12. Sustainable Service Review: Ecosiathesensiblefay.com
    review

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