EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignSearch EnginesHeadquarters: FR

Lilo: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Lilo is a French search engine with a solidarity-based funding model. Users search for free and choose which social or environmental projects receive their contribution; according to Lilo, 80 per cent of its profits go to those associations. Revenue comes from sponsored links in the search results. Lilo is a metasearch engine that uses results from other search engines, notably Bing and partners such as Google and Yahoo, and since September 2025 also the algorithms of Qwant, including a European index. The service is delivered through the web.

Lilo is operated by Lilo SAS, based in Paris. In May 2025 the French search engine Qwant acquired Lilo, so both companies are in France. Because Lilo draws many results from other search engines, queries may be passed on to non-European partners such as Microsoft; this is not documented in detail. Where the servers are located is not stated. Lilo is not open source and is offered only as a hosted service.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Lilo pre-selected
Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked July 2, 2026
HeadquartersFR (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalOVH - OVH SAS, FR (FR)Technically measured
CategorySearch Engines
TypeProduct
Websitelilo.org ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Lilo

The European alternatives to Lilo come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

15 European Search Engines vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Lilo

Lilo is headquartered in FR and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so Lilo scores best on data residency.

Lilo is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Lilo together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Lilo?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Lilo include Ecosia, MetaGer and Najdi.si. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Lilo?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Lilo include MetaGer and SearXNG. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Lilo GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Lilo is headquartered in FR (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Lilo an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Search Engines

Search Engines: Search engines — privacy-friendly web searching. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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8 European alternatives to Lilo — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score