What eTools.ch actually does
eTools.ch is a metasearch engine developed and operated by Comcepta AG, an IT consulting and solutions company based in Basel, Switzerland. Rather than building and maintaining its own web index — the expensive, years-long undertaking that makes independent search engines rare — eTools.ch queries a wide set of existing search engines simultaneously and merges the results into one consolidated view, describing itself as "a transparent Metasearch Engine from Switzerland."
The core product
The technical core is Comcepta's own EnterpriseMetasearch technology, which fires a query out to 17 search engines in parallel and returns a merged result set, typically completing in about 0.76 seconds according to the company's own benchmarking. The list of sources spans major international engines — Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Yandex — alongside more specialized services like Wikipedia, Brave and Mojeek, academic-leaning sources like Base, Swiss-specific engines including search.ch and Tiger, and niche or alternative engines such as Marginalia, Wiby and CrowdView. The product carries Switzerland's official "Swiss Made Software" label, a designation tied to the company being genuinely Swiss-developed and Swiss-operated rather than a rebranded foreign product. Users can search through a standard web interface or a mobile-optimized version, with options for advanced search filters and adjustable preferences, and the platform provides a dedicated privacy statement along with the ability to reset session data.
What's new or notable
Comcepta AG has kept eTools.ch running as a stable, low-key Swiss alternative for years rather than chasing rapid feature expansion, and the company's broader IT-consulting business gives it a funding base independent of the search product's own advertising, which is part of why the service has remained free without needing a subscription push. According to the copyright notice on its own homepage, eTools.ch has been running continuously since 1999, which makes it one of the longer-running independent metasearch services in Europe, predating most of today's well-known alternative search engines by well over a decade. Comcepta itself frames the underlying EnterpriseMetasearch technology as a "Federated Search Solution," positioning it as enterprise-grade search infrastructure that happens to also power a free public consumer product rather than the other way around. The breadth of 17 simultaneously queried engines, including genuinely Swiss sources rather than only global ones, remains its most distinctive and durable feature.
Who should use eTools.ch
Great fit if…
- You want to compare engines, not commit to one — seeing how Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo rank the same query side by side surfaces things a single engine hides.
- You specifically want Swiss-hosted infrastructure — Comcepta AG is Basel-based and the product holds the official Swiss Made Software designation.
- You want session-level privacy without an account — no sign-up is required and session data can be reset.
- You appreciate a track record — a service that has run continuously since 1999 without ever adding a paywall has a longer proof point than most alternative search products can offer.
Skip it if…
- You want one clean ranked list — merging 17 sources produces a broader but occasionally noisier result page than a single well-tuned engine.
- You need the underlying sites you click through to also be private — eTools.ch's own privacy layer only covers the query step, not what happens once you land on a result from Google or Yandex.
Pricing in detail
eTools.ch is completely free to use, with no account, subscription or premium search tier — access to the full metasearch across all 17 engines is available to every visitor by default. That has held true for the entire life of the product, from its 1999 launch through to today, with no paid version ever introduced alongside it.
| Plan | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| eTools.ch | Free — €0 | Metasearch across 17 engines, advanced filters, mobile-optimized version, privacy statement and session reset |
Where it falls short
- No independent ranking of its own — quality is entirely a function of the 17 underlying engines it queries, not an eTools-built algorithm.
- Privacy coverage stops at the query — once you click through to a result page hosted by another engine, that engine's own privacy practices take over.
Privacy & data
eTools.ch publishes a dedicated privacy statement and lets users reset session data, and operates under Swiss data protection law from Comcepta AG's Basel base — a jurisdiction outside the EU with its own, generally strict, privacy framework. It does not require account creation to search.
How we checked this
Verified against etools.ch's homepage and privacy statement, Comcepta AG's own company and contact pages confirming its Basel, Switzerland base, and the Swiss Made Software organization's listing for the company, all checked 2026-09-05.
What you get, what you give up
What you get
- Queries 17 search engines in parallel, including Swiss-specific sources like search.ch and Tiger alongside global ones, in under a second
- Carries Switzerland's official 'Swiss Made Software' designation and is built on Comcepta AG's own EnterpriseMetasearch technology rather than a white-labeled product
What you give up
- Being a metasearch layer over other engines, its own privacy protection only covers the eTools.ch query step, not whatever the underlying engines do once a click lands on their results
- 17 simultaneous engine queries surface a wide but sometimes noisy result set that takes more scanning than a single clean ranked list