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 | |
Type of site | Search engine andweb browser |
|---|---|
| Available in | English and 27 other languages |
| Headquarters | , Germany |
| CEO | Christian Kroll |
| Revenue | 35.3M€ (2023)[1] |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Users | >20 million[2] |
| Launched |
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| Current status | Active |
Ecosia (derived from "eco" and "utopia"[3]) is a non-profit tech organisation based inBerlin, Germany. It runs its namesake internetsearch engine, which launched on 7 December 2009 to coincide withUN climate talks inCopenhagen.[4] More recently the organisation has launched additional products such as a namesakeweb browser.
Ecosia delivers a combination of search results fromYahoo!,Google,[5]Bing andWikipedia.[3] As of 2023, it sources its search results predominantly from Google.[6]
Advertisements are delivered by Yahoo! andMicrosoft Advertising as part of arevenue sharing agreement with the company.[7]
Ecosia Chat is anAIchatbot powered byOpenAI's API which features a unique "green answers" option.[8]
The Ecosia Browser is aproprietaryweb browser based onChromium. The browser has a built-inad blocker, AI chatbot, and a climate pledge rating that assess a company’s pledges on environmental sustainability. Ecosia has also committed to producing 25Wh of renewable energy for each day that a user browses with the browser.[9][10][11]
Freetree, launched in 2022, was abrowser extension that used commission from online shopping to plant trees.[12] Ecosia announced in June 2025 that it was shutting Freetree because it "never reached enough users to scale sustainably".[13]
Ecosia states in itsprivacy policy that it does not create personal profiles based on search history or use externaltracking tools. TheIP address andsearch queries of the user are given to eitherMicrosoft Bing orGoogle to "provide search results and ads" and to "prevent bot attacks and frauds". Additionally, Ecosia shares the user's IP address withTripadvisor andWikimedia when images from those services are displayed.[14]
For the Ecosia Chat feature, Ecosia retains queries to improve its service but does not store personal information.[14][15] They do not share personal data withOpenAI; however, any information shared during chats is sent to OpenAI.[16] Although the data from these chats will not be used to train OpenAI's models, chat data is stored in OpenAI's database for up to 30 days to allow access for issue resolution and conversation recovery.
In August 2025, Ecosia began to provide search results to French users from its new Europe-based index, developed jointly with French search engineQwant.[17][non-primary source needed]
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The company usesrenewable energy to power its servers and invests its profits in tree-planting projects, aiming to absorb moreCO2 than it emits.[18]
In October 2018, founder Christian Kroll announced he had given some of his shares to the Purpose Foundation.[19] As a result, Kroll and Ecosia co-owner Tim Schumacher gave up their right to sell Ecosia or take any profits out of the company.[20][21]
Ecosia is also transparent about their financial status as their financial reports are readily available online on their website.[22]
In 2022, Ecosia stated that it earns "a few cents" on every click of an ad, as well as a portion of the price of a purchase made through anaffiliate link.[23]
Ecosia has a long-standing relationship withMicrosoft to keep its investment in infrastructure small,[24] through the use of Bing's existing implementation and an ad revenue sharing agreement.[24]
In October 2020, Ecosia announced it had bought a 20% stake in thedebit card company TreeCard.[25][26] Cards produced by TreeCard are made of Britishcherry wood instead of the customary plastics found in most other debit cards.[26][27] It planned to launch a new debit card in 2021, in partnership withMastercard.[27] Ecosia intended to send 80% of its profits from the card to global reforestation projects.[26]
In November 2024, Ecosia announced that it had partnered withQwant in a joint-venture to build the European Search Index, a search index created to provide more localized search results in the French and German languages, and to reduce the reliance on Bing and Google.[28][29][30]
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Ecosia, speaking in 2021, claims that each search removes 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere.[2]
In January 2023, Ecosia handled 0.29% of European search requests, behindDuckDuckGo's 0.53%, Bing's 3.65%, and Google's 92.23%.[31]
As of 2024, Ecosia has handled 0.30% of European search requests and 0.09% of global search requests.[32]
Over time, Ecosia has supported various tree-planting initiatives.
Ecosia uses 80% of its profits (47.1% of itsincome) from advertising revenue to supporttree-planting projects.[33][34][35]
Ecosia isB Lab certified, having met its standards ofaccountability,sustainability, and performance. The company has been certified since April 2014.[36][37]
By July 2020, Ecosia had surpassed 100 million trees planted in total.
In June 2022 Ecosia had passed 150 million trees planted.[38][39][40][41]
In 2023, Ecosia also set up an incubator for regenerative agriculture, invested into climate tech solutions and diversified their search providers for an improved search experience.[citation needed]
It was reported in the same month that Ecosia, on average, was able to fund a tree planting every 0.8 seconds – averaging 75 per minute or 108,000 per day – with the revenue it makes from advertising.[40]
As of 1 February 2024, the company claims to have planted more than 200 million trees since its inception.[42][43]
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Ecosia can be used on any web browser from ecosia.org. Web browsers can also be configured to use the search engine from a built-in user interface without having to load a web page first.
Ecosia can be made the default built-in search engine on Google Chrome,[33] Firefox,[34] Safari,[44]Microsoft Edge,[45] and other browsers as by downloading the extension from theChrome Web Store orMozilla's Add-on site, among others. InMobile phones, Ecosia has its ownChromium-basedweb browser app inGoogle Play Store andApp Store.
As of 26 January 2016, with its version 26 release, thePale Moon web browser has included Ecosia as a built-in search engine option[46], as has the Polarity web browser since its release in 15 February 2016.[47] Ecosia also briefly was the default search engine of theWaterfox web browser starting with version 44.0.2.[48]Vivaldi has included Ecosia as a default search engine option since its version 1.9 release.[49] In March 2018,Firefox 59.0 added Ecosia as a search engine option for the German version.[50][51]
As of 12 March 2020, Ecosia was included as a default search engine option forGoogle Chrome in 47 markets, the first time anot-for-profit search engine appeared as a choice to users.[52] On 14 December 2020,Apple'sSafari web browser added Ecosia as a search engine option inmacOS Big Sur 11.1 andiOS/iPadOS 14.3.[44] On 28 January 2021, Ecosia became an official search engine on theBrave browser as a result of a partnership announced that day by both companies.[53][54]
On 22 April 2024, Ecosia launched its ownChromium-based web browser fordesktop users. The company also started to promote affiliate links to collect revenue from user purchases on sites such as Amazon.[55]
On 17 December 2024,Mozilla announced their partnership with Ecosia. On 21 January 2025, Firefox added Ecosia as a default search option for users in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.[56][57]
An article inEthical Consumer examined Ecosia and its relation to its search provider, Bing.
Giving Ecosia an "Ethiscore" of 11, in contrast to Google (5.5) and Microsoft Bing (6.5),Ethical Consumer found Ecosia to be superior to the other search engine companies it looked at, but marked it down in seven categories for its relationship with Microsoft (the lowest scorer in those categories).[58]
Ethical Consumer made a point of clarifying that it's not the actualsearches which lead to tree planting, but theclick-through of search engine users to the ads, and called for improved transparency concerning its relationship with Microsoft Bing.[58]
On 12 August 2019, Ecosia announced it would not participate in the "search-choice" auction to appear on Android devices led by Google.[59] This meant that in 2020, European Android phone users did not have the option to set Ecosia as a default search engine.
Christian Kroll explained the boycott decision saying
We're deeply disappointed that Google has decided to exploit its dominant market position in this way. Instead of giving wide and fair access, Google has chosen to give discrimination a different form and make everyone else but themselves pay, which isn't something we can accept[.][59]
