A manifesto · and the policy below
It is a precondition for free thought, free organising, and a free press. We built Zest because we refuse to live in a world where curiosity is collateral.
What we do · what we refuse
Zest may show a small number of clearly labelled ads and featured links to help pay for the servers. They never use your searches, history or any profile of you, and nothing follows you around the web. We only advertise our own projects, hand-picked projects that fit your search, and vetted ad networks, and we remove any that break these rules. Ads never pose as results, hide in tiny banners, or compete for your attention. Every ad has a Report link, you can turn them off in Settings, and using an ad blocker is fine. To know what to charge and what to keep, we count how often each ad is shown and clicked as a daily total per ad. These counts are not linked to you, your device or your searches, and ad images come from Zest, not from the advertiser.
No third-party pixels, beacons, fingerprinting scripts, or session replay. The page that loads is the page you see.
Zest keeps no log of who searched for what: no accounts, no IP addresses, no history. To answer repeat searches quickly, the results for a search are held in a short-lived cache, in server memory and, if enabled, in a shared cache that expires them within minutes to hours. A cached entry is the public result list, kept under a key made from the search, and is never linked to you, your device or your IP address. It is there to save the search engines from being asked twice, not to remember you.
Your browser only ever talks to Zest. Big-corp CDNs (Google, YouTube, Deezer, news sites) get hit by our server with rotating fake headers — never by you.
Backed by SearXNG, which is open source: inspect it, fork it, run your own. No remote toggles, no telemetry phoning home.
Information is a commons. We refuse to be a chokepoint, refuse to monetise oppression, refuse to make peace with surveillance capitalism.
We don't optimise for time-on-page. We optimise for getting you the answer and getting out of the way.
Privacy policy (GDPR information)
Tayron März, Am Steinsgraben 32, 37085 Göttingen, Germany · hi@taymaerz.de (see Impressum). There is no data protection officer; none is required.
Zest runs at a hosting provider (currently Vercel Inc., USA, with a data processing agreement; transfers rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and Standard Contractual Clauses). When you open a page, the provider processes your IP address, time, requested address and browser identifier to deliver the page and protect it against attacks. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (secure and working service). Zest itself keeps no access log of searches and no IP address in its database. For rate limiting, IP addresses are held in server memory for at most a few minutes.
Your search text (and the chosen language, category and SafeSearch setting) is sent from our server to one or more SearXNG instances (open-source metasearch servers). Your IP address and browser details are not forwarded. Those instances are run by third parties that we do not control and that can be located outside the EU; they see the search text. Please do not put personal data of other people or sensitive data into search boxes. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR (providing the search you asked for).
To answer repeated searches quickly, the public result list is cached for minutes to hours in server memory and, if enabled, in a shared cache (Redis, EU/US region depending on setup). The cache entry is keyed by the search and contains no information about you.
Images, favicons and map tiles are fetched by our server and passed on to you, so the original site does not receive your IP address. Maps and places use OpenStreetMap services (Nominatim, tiles) via our server.
When you use the AI tab, your question and the conversation so far are sent to an AI provider chosen by our server from this list: Pollinations, OpenRouter (free models), Groq, Cerebras, Google (Gemini) and Mistral AI. These providers are located partly in the USA and can use inputs on free tiers to improve their models. Do not enter personal, confidential or sensitive data. Your IP address is not forwarded. Answers are generated by AI and may be wrong. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR; you decide whether to use the feature. Conversations are not stored on our server.
If you open a video in the player, the embed provider you selected (YouTube no-cookie, operated by Google, or an Invidious instance) receives your IP address and loads its player; this only happens after you click. Music previews and song details come from Deezer via our server. When you open the lyrics of a song, our server asks the community database LRCLIB (lrclib.net) for them using only the artist and title; your IP address is not forwarded. Lyrics belong to their rights holders; rights holders can ask us to remove a song at any time (see Impressum).
If you choose "Reader" on a result, our server fetches that page, removes scripts and trackers and shows you a plain-text copy, so the site does not receive your IP address. The copy is not stored. The content belongs to the site's owner; if you are a rights holder and want your site excluded, tell us (see Impressum).
Visitors get no cookies. Settings, the optional search history, dismissed notices and similar choices are stored in your browser's local storage only. They never leave your device and are strictly necessary to provide the feature you chose (§ 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG). You can delete them in your browser or in Settings. The administrator login uses a technically necessary session cookie.
If you write to us, we store the subject, message and, if you provide it, your email address and instance link in our database to answer you or process the request. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR. Messages are deleted after 180 days at the latest. The form is not meant for children under 16.
Ads are matched on our server against your search text, which is not stored. We count impressions and clicks per ad per day and total page views and searches. These counters contain no personal data.
You have the right to access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21 GDPR). You can withdraw consent at any time. Write to hi@taymaerz.de. You can complain to a supervisory authority, for example the Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz Niedersachsen, Prinzenstraße 5, 30159 Hannover. There is no automated decision-making with legal effect.
Stand: October 2026. See also the terms of use.
Zest runs on SearXNG, a free metasearch project. Read the live numbers we keep — they're tiny and they reset on restart. If anything here turns out to be untrue, that's a bug. Tell us on the contact page and we will fix it or correct this page.