ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini (among others) have successfully made AI chatbots mainstream and serve as viable alternatives to standard web search engines. In turn, the standard search engines from those companies (along with alternative ones) have adopted some AI elements.
Bing, for example, now offers the Copilot Search feature, which shows the AI’s reasoning process. Meanwhile, Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews, respectively, provide chatbot-like functionality and a summary of findings at the top of a results page.
AI can greatly improve the web search experience. With standard web search, you often need to pore over multiple web pages to find the kernel of knowledge you’re after. With AI search, you often need only enter a single text prompt. Furthermore, if an initial answer isn’t quite what you’re looking for, you can steer the bot in the right direction with follow-up prompts. You don’t have to keep rephrasing the same query the way you do with standard search engines or with legacy AI voice assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri.
But we aren’t focusing on Copilot in Bing or Google’s various AI search features here. Instead, we are looking at search engines that run entirely on generative AI.
Generative AI and chatbots typically rely on large language models (LLMs) that train on an information set with a specific cutoff date. The search engines we highlight here also use LLMs to understand the text you enter, but rather than basing their results on a fixed knowledge base, they scan the live web for up-to-date information and use AI to generate the best answer. The better ones even show you their sources so you can double-check them.
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Remember that, like all generative AI tools, the search engines on this list might make mistakes, just like humans. So be sure to check what you’re told! Read on to explore the most intriguing AI search engines we’ve come across.
Best for General Search
Andi bills itself as “search for the next generation” and has a friendly interface. It shows its best-guess search results in a central response area and additional preview cards with web links in a side panel. A Summarize Results button appears after responses in the main section, while cards can have (in order) Visit, Read (opens a reading mode), Summarize, and Explain options. Both summarization choices take a few seconds to generate a short report with footnotes. Depending on the query, you can filter responses by Results, News, Images, and Video in the side panel. You can display them as cards, a list, tiles, or classic blue Google links.
Andi is less conversational than popular AI chatbots and doesn’t maintain the context for follow-up queries. Nor will it immediately write a cover letter, give you a complete recipe for asparagus au gratin, or plan a trip itinerary, though it can find quality sites that help you do those things. Andi also won’t generate images for you or give you a choice of LLMs (the site uses Claude), nor does it let you use your voice to search.
According to the site, “Andi is free and anonymous. In the future, there will be certain additional features that will require sign-in and paid plans.” To that end, the company launched a waitlist for Andi Plus and references a paid business tier in some places. However, we haven’t seen any updates about Andi Plus for a long time. Andi currently doesn’t show ads, but the site documentation states that it intends to share revenue with content-creator sites. The site is available online for anyone to try.
Best for Clear Interface and Choice of Models
Bagoodex has one of the clearest interfaces of any product here, so you shouldn’t have trouble switching to it from a standard web search engine. Like other generative AI tools, it takes a few seconds to return an answer, though results are clear and relevant. Despite some trouble getting information about current events in past testing, Bagoodex correctly identified the release date of the iPhone 17, which was relatively recent news during our testing period.
Search results appear in the center of the page, along with an Ask Follow-Up box at the bottom that lets you continue the conversation. It provides suggested follow-ups, as well as sources for its answers. Bagoodex maintains your answers in a thread, an advantage over traditional web searches. The search result has Export, Copy to Clipboard, and Copy Link buttons. You can switch to a chat mode that sends prompts to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Finally, Bagoodex can generate images using DALL-E, Flux, or Recraft models, which deliver impressive results quickly.
Search is free and without ads, and the company hasn’t announced monetization plans. It also doesn’t require a sign-in, as other services here do. In chat mode, though, you can run out of credits. Signing up for a Bagoodex account with your Google login gets you 30 credits per day. If you want more, you can sign up for Bagoodex Plus ($9 per month for 2,000 credits) or Bagoodex Pro ($29 per month for 8,000 credits).
Most Advanced AI Model
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the service that popularized generative AI, works for regular web searches. Click the plus sign from the main interface, open the More section at the bottom, and choose Web Search. You should see a little globe icon in the text box. Alternatively, you can just ask a question normally, and ChatGPT will search the web if necessary. Just as with standard ChatGPT, you can ask follow-up questions, and the service maintains the context of your conversations.
You get limited free access to the GPT-5 model with options for Think Longer and Deep Research. Limited access means you can ask only so many questions each day. The site can read answers aloud for you in a lifelike voice, and you get the option to thumbs-up or thumbs-down the result. Importantly, ChatGPT Search has a Sources button that opens a sidebar with links to its sources of information. However, you need to log in to access some features.
Originally only for ChatGPT Plus subscribers ($20 per month), the search feature is available to free users and allows speech input. ChatGPT has apps (which require account sign-in) for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. A Chrome extension is available if you make ChatGPT your default search engine.
ChatGPT Review
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Best for Targeted Search Categories
Komo has a simple interface with helpful tools, such as a Mind Map that shows a tree chart of your results and an Explore button that displays thumbnails for related searches. You can choose an AI model, including versions of Claude, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Gemini, alongside Komo Search and Llama 3.3. For standard search purposes, the Komo Search model should serve you well; its documentation says it excels at answer generation, document ranking, and query understanding.
Another helpful tool is Komo’s Personas: Copy Writer, Equity Researcher, Explainer, Planner, Quote Collector, TL;DR, and more. These provide a way to tune responses to your needs, and we haven’t seen equivalent options in other AI chatbots. You can also select a Data Corpus, such as Academic, Blog, News, Socials, Video, and Web.
You can use Komo for free, but must pay to access special features. The Basic level, which costs $12 per month (billed annually), offers features like AI Fact Check, limited access to model selection, and Personas. The $24-per-month Premium tier (also billed annually) unlocks different models and more advanced queries.
No dedicated apps are available, but you can install Komo as a PWA on mobile or desktop platforms.
Best for News Topics
Perplexity is comparable to Microsoft’s Copilot. At one point, it even called one of its features Copilot! Like that tool, Perplexity shows source links for its results and saves your previous queries. Those comprise the cleverly named Threads (not to be confused with Meta’s Threads social network). It saves these to your Library, and you can add follow-up queries.
Perplexity’s result page can be busier than other sites here since it includes buy tiles and source links with images. Another difference is that Perplexity has a Discover page similar to Google News. Another option is Spaces, where you can add Thread entries, upload files, and use AI analysis to get summaries; you can share Spaces with others for collaboration.
Free Perplexity users get unlimited Quick searches and three Pro searches per day. Professional accounts ($20 per month) unlock 300 Pro searches per day, AI model choices, and unlimited file uploads. They also include searching within Spaces. Perplexity offers Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows apps and a browser extension for Chromium-based browsers, but not Firefox or Safari. Perplexity is naturally the default search service on the Comet browser.
