Wikipedia

Ecosia

Ecosia is a search engine whose profits are used to pursue environmental goals. Ecosia's search results are provided by its own search index, Staan, developed by the co-founded European Search Perspective (EUSP), as well as Google and Microsoft Bing; thus, Ecosia is partly a proxy search engine. In 2025, Ecosia had a global market share of 0.10-0.15%.[3]

Ecosia
Type of site
Search engine and web browser
Available inEnglish and 46 other languages
Headquarters
Berlin
,
Germany
CEOChristian Kroll
Revenue43.2M€ (2025)[1]
URLwww.ecosia.org Edit this at Wikidata
CommercialYes
Users>20 million[2]
LaunchedSearch engine: December 7, 2009 Web browser: April 22, 2024
Current statusActive

The operating company, Ecosia GmbH, was founded in 2009[4] and is headquartered in Berlin.

Services

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Ecosia

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Ecosia has historically delivered a combination of search results from Google, Bing and Wikipedia.[5] As of 2023, it sources its search results predominantly from Google.[6] In 2024, Ecosia started building an independent European search index as a joint venture with Qwant,[7] and in August 2025 user queries started being partially fulfilled by the new index.[8][9]

Advertisements are delivered by Yahoo! and Microsoft Advertising as part of a revenue sharing agreement with the company.[10]

Ecosia Chat

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Ecosia Chat is an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's API which features a unique "green answers" option.[11]

Ecosia Browser

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The Ecosia Browser is a proprietary web browser based on Chromium. The browser has a built-in ad 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.[12][13][14]

Former services

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Freetree, launched in 2022, was a browser extension that used commission from online shopping to plant trees.[15] Ecosia announced in June 2025 that it was shutting Freetree because it "never reached enough users to scale sustainably".[16][17]

Privacy

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Ecosia states in its privacy policy that it does not create personal profiles based on search history or use external tracking tools. The IP address and search queries of the user are given to either Microsoft Bing or Google to "provide search results and ads" and to "prevent bot attacks and frauds". Additionally, Ecosia shares the user's IP address with Tripadvisor and Wikimedia when images from those services are displayed.[18][non-primary source needed]

For the Ecosia Chat feature, Ecosia retains queries to improve its service but does not store personal information.[18][19][20] They do not share personal data with OpenAI; however, any information shared during chats is sent to OpenAI.[21][22] 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 engine Qwant.[23][24]

Business model

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Christian Kroll, founder of Ecosia, in 2019

The company uses renewable energy to power its servers and invests in other climate initiatives, aiming to absorb more CO2 than it emits.[25][12][26]

In October 2018, founder Christian Kroll announced he had given some of his shares to the Purpose Foundation.[27] 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.[28][29]

Partnerships

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Microsoft

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Ecosia has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft to keep its investment in infrastructure small,[30] through the use of Bing's existing implementation and an ad revenue sharing agreement.[30]

TreeCard

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In October 2020, Ecosia announced it had bought a 20% stake in the debit card company TreeCard.[31][32] Cards produced by TreeCard are made of British cherry wood instead of the customary plastics found in most other debit cards.[32][33] It planned to launch a new debit card in 2021, in partnership with Mastercard.[33][34] Ecosia intended to send 80% of its profits from the card to global reforestation projects.[32]

Qwant

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In November 2024, Ecosia announced that it had partnered with Qwant 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.[35][36][37][38][39]

Impact

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Map of countries where Ecosia is planting trees as of 2021[40]

Ecosia in 2021 claimed that each search removes 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere.[41]

In January 2023, Ecosia handled 0.29% of European search requests, behind DuckDuckGo's 0.53%, Bing's 3.65%, and Google's 92.23%.[42][43]

As of 2024, Ecosia has handled 0.30% of European search requests and 0.09% of global search requests.[43]

On ESG

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In 2017, it built its first solar plant.[12]

As of 2021, Ecosia used 80% of its profits (47.1% of its income) from advertising revenue to support tree-planting projects.[44][45][46]

Ecosia is B Lab certified, having met its standards of accountability, sustainability, and performance. The company has been certified since April 2014,[47][48] becoming the first German company to receive the certification.[12]

On tree-planting

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By July 2020, Ecosia had surpassed 100 million trees planted in total.[49] Ecosia devotes 80% of its profits to tree planting.[50]

In June 2022 Ecosia had passed 150 million trees planted.[51][52][49][53]

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.[54]

In 2024, new tree planting work was started in Togo, Madagascar, Vietnam and the Netherlands; other works also included rewetting dried peatlands in Germany and creating firebreaks in southern France.[55]

By 2025, Ecosia had achieved its original goal of planting 230 million trees.[56][57] Ecosia decided to diversify its climate investments beyond tree planting to areas like climate tech, renewable energy and protecting biodiversity.[58][26]

Wolfgang Oels, chief operating officer of Ecosia, speaking at the KlimaAfterWork event in 2022

Availability

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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,[44] Firefox,[45] Safari,[59] Microsoft Edge,[60] and other browsers as by downloading the extension from the Chrome Web Store or Mozilla's Add-on site, among others. In Mobile phones, Ecosia has its own Chromium-based web browser app in Google Play Store and App Store.

As of 26 January 2016, with its version 26 release, the Pale Moon web browser has included Ecosia as a built-in search engine option[61], as has the Polarity web browser since its release in 15 February 2016.[62] Ecosia also briefly was the default search engine of the Waterfox web browser starting with version 44.0.2.[63] Vivaldi has included Ecosia as a default search engine option since its version 1.9 release.[64] In March 2018, Firefox 59.0 added Ecosia as a search engine option for the German version.[65][66]

As of 12 March 2020, Ecosia was included as a default search engine option for Google Chrome in 47 markets, the first time a not-for-profit search engine appeared as a choice to users.[67] On 14 December 2020, Apple's Safari web browser added Ecosia as a search engine option in macOS Big Sur 11.1 and iOS/iPadOS 14.3.[59] On 28 January 2021, Ecosia became an official search engine on the Brave browser as a result of a partnership announced that day by both companies.[68][69]

On 12 August 2019, Ecosia announced it would not participate in the "search-choice" auction to appear on Android devices led by Google.[70] This meant that in 2020, European Android phone users did not have the option to set Ecosia as a default search engine.[70]

On 22 April 2024, Ecosia launched its own Chromium-based web browser for desktop users. The company also started to promote affiliate links to collect revenue from user purchases on sites such as Amazon.[71][12]

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.[72][73]

Reception

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A 2021 article in Ethical 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).[74] Ethical Consumer made a point of clarifying that it's not the actual searches which lead to tree planting, but the click-through of search engine users to the ads, and called for improved transparency concerning its relationship with Microsoft Bing.[74]

A 2021 review by TechRadar like the privacy focus and quality of search experience but cautioned users about the privacy downsides of its reliance on Bing as well as the inconvenience of Ecosia insisting on installing their extensions.[75]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ "Ecosia's Financial reports". Ecosia. 22 May 2020. Archived from the original on 19 April 2026. Retrieved 21 April 2026. (The value 43.2M€ for annual revenue in 2023 was obtained by the summation of monthly revenues available in the drop-down list format of monthly blog posts about financial reports of 2023. )
  2. ↑ Kelly, Ross (8 April 2021). "How Ecosia is helping tackle climate change, one click at a time". Digit News. Archived from the original on 3 August 2021. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  3. ↑ Kavelar, Nico (4 June 2025). "Suchmaschinen & KI-Suche in Deutschland 2025". SE Ranking Deutsch (in German). Archived from the original on 31 December 2025. Retrieved 21 April 2026.
  4. ↑ "Growing a Movement: Our Key Milestones - Ecosia Help Center". support.ecosia.org. Retrieved 21 April 2026.
  5. ↑ Bearne, Suzanne (30 August 2020). "The search engine boss who wants to help us all plant trees". BBC News. Archived from the original on 15 July 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2022.
  6. ↑ Guest, Peter (16 October 2023). "A 'Green' Search Engine Sees Danger - and Opportunity - in the Generative AI Revolution". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on 23 July 2025. Retrieved 31 October 2025.
  7. ↑ "Can Europe build itself a rival to Google?". dw.com. 9 December 2024. Retrieved 22 March 2026.
  8. ↑ "The internet just got better: our European search index goes live". blog.ecosia.org. 7 August 2025. Retrieved 15 January 2026.
  9. ↑ online, heise (7 August 2025). "Ecosia und Qwant starten Web-Suche über europäischen Index". heise online (in German). Archived from the original on 27 February 2026. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  10. ↑ jlo (12 September 2014). "Ecosia: Eine Suchmaschine möchte den Regenwald retten" [A search engine wants to save the rain forest]. Sueddeutsche.de (in German). Archived from the original on 22 February 2020. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
  11. ↑ Ahlgren, Linnea (4 December 2023). "Tree-planting search engine Ecosia launches 'green' AI chatbot". The Next Web. Archived from the original on 7 October 2024. Retrieved 5 February 2025.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Lawrence, Cate (22 April 2024). "Ecosia: the world's largest non-profit search engine launches eco-friendly browser". Tech.eu. Archived from the original on 25 April 2025. Retrieved 7 May 2026.
  13. ↑ Hale, Craig (22 April 2024). "Ecosia launches plant-friendly cross-platform browser". TechRadar. Retrieved 29 March 2025.
  14. ↑ "Designed for you, built for the planet: the new Ecosia Browser". The Ecosia Blog. 22 April 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2025.
  15. ↑ Gockelen-Kozlowski, Tom (28 June 2022). "Freetree: Ecosia's new browser extension allows users to plant trees as they shop". Business Green.
  16. ↑ "Saying goodbye to freetree". Ecosia Blog. 4 June 2025. Retrieved 23 July 2025.
  17. ↑ "Goodbye freetree 🌳: Vor circa 4 Jahren gründete ich freetree.io und verkaufte es an Ecosia, in der Hoffnung, dass dieser Schritt die schöne Idee richtig groß machen könnte... Wir haben dann… | Matthias Herbert". LinkedIn. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  18. 1 2 "We protect your privacy". www.ecosia.org. Archived from the original on 7 October 2024. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
  19. ↑ "Privacy Policy". OpenAI. n.d. Archived from the original on 6 October 2024. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
  20. ↑ "Ecosia Ai Chat: Alles zu dem nachhaltigen KI-Chatbot". praxistipps.chip.de (in German). Archived from the original on 2 December 2025. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  21. ↑ "Ecosia Chat AI". Ecosia Help Scout. 26 September 2023. Archived from the original on 7 October 2024. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
  22. ↑ Hecht, Benjamin (11 December 2025). "Google-Konkurrent startet "grünste KI der Welt" - das steckt dahinter". Utopia.de (in German). Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  23. ↑ "The internet just got better: our European search index goes live". The Ecosia Blog. 7 August 2025. Archived from the original on 9 August 2025. Retrieved 9 August 2025.
  24. ↑ Mehta, Ivan (6 August 2025). "Qwant and Ecosia debut Staan, a European search index that aims to take on Big Tech". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 3 December 2025. Retrieved 2 December 2025.
  25. ↑ "Meet Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees". The Carbon Almanac. Retrieved 6 June 2024.
  26. 1 2 Pegoraro, Rob (16 May 2025). "This Search Engine Uses Its Earnings to Help the Environment. New Dashboard Lets You Track Your Impact". PCMAG. Archived from the original on 2 April 2026. Retrieved 7 May 2026.
  27. ↑ Tönnesmann, Jens (24 October 2018). "Good bye, Frau Merkel". Zeit.de (in German). Archived from the original on 15 October 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  28. ↑ Köhn-Haskins, Josefine; Thomas, Jan (9 October 2018). "Ecosia-Gründer Christian Kroll ist ein Überzeugungstäter". Berlin Valley (in German). Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  29. ↑ Dean, Grace (23 May 2021). "Search engine Ecosia plants trees in exchange for searches. It uses pay-per-click ads to fund projects that positively impact both people and nature". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 4 August 2021. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  30. 1 2 Holzki, Larissa (11 May 2021). "Suchmaschine Ecosia: Bäume bilanzieren statt Gewinne maximieren" [Ecosia search engine: taking stock of trees instead of maximizing profits]. Handelsblatt (in German). Archived from the original on 27 October 2023. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  31. ↑ "TreeCard – The wooden debit card that plants trees". treecard.org. Archived from the original on 5 June 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  32. 1 2 3 Paul Hill (15 October 2020). "Ecosia will fund tree-planting with spend on wooden debit card". Neowin. Archived from the original on 18 March 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  33. 1 2 Callum Borroughs (15 October 2020). "Here's an exclusive look at the pitch deck a 23-year-old Y Combinator alum used to raise $1 million for ethical bank cards". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 8 April 2022. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  34. ↑ Gillen, Tobias (17 October 2020). "Treecard: Diese Mastercard planzt Bäume für dich". FINANZENTDECKER (in German). Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  35. ↑ "We're teaming up with Qwant to build a European search index". The Ecosia Blog. 3 December 2024. Archived from the original on 14 January 2025. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  36. ↑ Dave, Paresh (14 November 2024). "Two Upstart Search Engines Are Teaming Up to Take on Google". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on 14 January 2025. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  37. ↑ Browne, Ryan (12 November 2024). "European Google rivals partner on search engine infrastructure to counter Big Tech". CNBC. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  38. ↑ Rose, Steve (26 February 2026). "Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 22 March 2026.
  39. ↑ Roberts, Willow (10 February 2025). "Big tech is dominating my digital life — here's how I fixed it". Digital Trends. Retrieved 22 March 2026.
  40. ↑ "Where Ecosia plants trees - Ecosia Help Center". support.ecosia.org. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  41. ↑ "Ecosia's Unique Model: Searches Needed To Fund Tree Planting | ShunCy". shuncy.com. Archived from the original on 16 July 2025. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  42. ↑ "Ranking of Internet search engines in Poland and worldwide for the years 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. - Greenfields EN". Greenfields.pl. 22 December 2022. Archived from the original on 30 November 2024. Retrieved 4 February 2024.
  43. 1 2 Karahan, Melissa (9 January 2023). "Ecosia: Was kann die nachhaltige Suchmaschine?". Optimerch GmbH (in German). Archived from the original on 20 January 2026. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  44. 1 2 De Andrado, Mahesh (12 May 2019). "Search online and plant a tree with Ecosia". The Sunday Times Sri Lanka. Archived from the original on 31 August 2019. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  45. 1 2 "Ecosia - The search engine that plants trees 🌱 - Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)". addons.mozilla.org. Archived from the original on 28 January 2020. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
  46. ↑ Smith, Adam (27 January 2021). "Green search engine Ecosia partners with pro-privacy Brave browser". The Independent. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  47. ↑ "Ecosia GmbH - Certified B Corporation - B Lab Global". www.bcorporation.net. Retrieved 6 October 2023.
  48. ↑ Evon, Dan (27 August 2019). "Does Search Engine Ecosia Use Profits to Plant Trees?". Snopes.com. Archived from the original on 26 March 2022. Retrieved 19 January 2020.
  49. 1 2 Hill, Paul (1 July 2020). "Ecosia search engine approaches 100 million planted trees". Neowin. Archived from the original on 25 July 2020. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  50. ↑ Bearne, Suzanne (30 August 2020). "The search engine boss who wants to help us all plant trees". BBC. Archived from the original on 15 July 2022. Retrieved 22 March 2026.
  51. ↑ "Ecosia users have planted 100 million trees: a milestone and a beginning!". The Ecosia Blog. 9 July 2020. Archived from the original on 9 August 2020. Retrieved 9 July 2020.
  52. ↑ Ohr, Thomas (9 July 2020). "Europe's green search engine Ecosia reaches milestone of 100 million trees planted". Archived from the original on 17 August 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
  53. ↑ Rice-Oxley, Mark (10 July 2020). "The Upside weekly report - Want to feel benefits of a break? Don't give up the day job ..." The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  54. ↑ Garcia, David Cendon (16 May 2025). "German search engine Ecosia unveils new climate impact experience for users, shifting away from tree planting". EU-Startups. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  55. ↑ Ecosia (27 December 2024). Reasons for CLIMATE HOPE in 2025. Retrieved 22 April 2026 – via YouTube.
  56. ↑ Siddiqi, Hanaa (16 May 2025). "Ecosia broadens Climate Strategy, Shifting from just Planting Trees to Diverse Green Investments". Sustainable Times. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  57. ↑ "Ecosia 2025: Search Greener, Plant Trees & Reclaim Your Privacy – An In-Depth Review". Humai.blog - Al Insights, Tools & Productivity Workflows. 27 May 2025. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  58. ↑ George, Sarah (15 May 2025). "Ecosia expands climate investment beyond tree planting". EDIE. Archived from the original on 20 May 2025. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  59. 1 2 "Ecosia now a default search engine option on iOS, iPadOS, macOS". AppleInsider. 14 December 2020. Archived from the original on 18 May 2021. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  60. ↑ "Microsoft Edge Addons". microsoftedge.microsoft.com. Archived from the original on 26 August 2021. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  61. ↑ "Release Notes for Archived Versions". Pale Moon. Archived from the original on 17 October 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2025.
  62. ↑ "Windows – Polarity". Polarity Weebly. Archived from the original on 18 May 2019. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  63. ↑ "Help Support Waterfox". Waterfox. Archived from the original on 13 April 2016. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  64. ↑ Nestor, Marius (27 April 2017). "Vivaldi 1.9 Browser Is Out with Ecosia Search Engine to Help Reforest the Planet". Softpedia. Archived from the original on 10 September 2019. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  65. ↑ "Release Notes for Firefox 59". Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Corporation. 31 March 2019. Archived from the original on 1 June 2019. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  66. ↑ "Mozilla makes Ecosia a Firefox search option in Germany". Ecosia. March 2018. Archived from the original on 11 August 2018. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
  67. ↑ "Tree planting search engine Ecosia is getting a visibility boost in Chrome". TechCrunch. 12 March 2020. Retrieved 17 April 2020.
  68. ↑ "Introducing a better internet: Ecosia is now available on Brave, the privacy browser". 28 January 2021. Archived from the original on 25 February 2021. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  69. ↑ "Ecosia is now an Official Search Engine Option on Brave". 28 January 2021. Archived from the original on 5 May 2021. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  70. 1 2 Oates, John (12 August 2019). "Green search engine Ecosia thinks Google's Android auction stinks, gives bid a hard pass". The Register. Archived from the original on 15 September 2019. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  71. ↑ Mehta, Ivan (22 April 2024). "Ecosia launches a cross-platform browser, starts an affiliate link program". TechCrunch. Retrieved 22 April 2024.
  72. ↑ "Mozilla partners with Ecosia for a better web | The Mozilla Blog". blog.mozilla.org. Archived from the original on 17 December 2024. Retrieved 17 December 2024.
  73. ↑ "Ecosia is now available in Firefox: make an impact with just three clicks". The Ecosia Blog. 21 January 2025. Archived from the original on 14 February 2025. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  74. 1 2 Owens, Jasmine (4 March 2021). "How ethical is the search engine Ecosia?". Ethical Consumer. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
  75. ↑ Bizzaco, Michael (31 July 2021). "Ecosia search engine review". TechRadar. Archived from the original on 8 May 2026. Retrieved 7 May 2026.
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