qwant.com

Kagi is the best around if you are willing to pay. If I had to cancel my subscription for whatever reason, I would go back to DDG.

Another option is SearXNG. It's meta search engine, which means that it aggregates other search engines like Google and Bing but without tracking or logging, because your searches are proxied using a public instance, that will mix your search with the ones from other people.

And about default search engine, don't know what you're talking about, both chrome and Firefox allows this, in mobile and desktop.

https://searx.space/

ecosia, like knowing that my searchs are helping the world a little

SearXNG

I like startpage.com. It doesn’t save your searches and I feel like it gives better results than DDG. Also it’s been around for awhile - it used to be ixquick

Marginalia is cool. It feels like an old-school search engine and truly provides results you don't see through Google, et al.

Duckduckgo and (downvotes incoming) brave search.

https://duckduckgo.com

https://search.brave.com/

And I disagree with you, I don't know a single browser where you can't change the default search engine.

I use stratpage. I find it reliable

I use a mix of all 3 search engines on firefox

I like AskJeeves but a case can be made for WebCrawler

startpage is alright if u want a quick alternative.

but definitely look into searx. it can be annoying to choose an instance (unless you self host!), but it can be a lot more customizable and decentralized