Nona
Nona Search Technologies GmbH operates a Germany-based, privacy-focused consumer web search engine at nona.de with a €2/month ad-free premium tier, plus Nona Answers, an API-based enterprise site-search product sold to banks, publishers, and public administration from Cologne on GDPR-compliant infrastructure.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2021
- HeadquartersCologne, Germany
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B and B2C
- OfferingSoftware
What Nona does
Nona Search Technologies GmbH is a Cologne-based, privately held German company that operates a privacy-focused consumer web search engine at nona.de alongside an enterprise search product called Nona Answers (answers.nona.de). The consumer product offers free search with generic, non-tracking contextual advertising and a €2/month premium tier that is fully ad-free with a 30-day trial; an Android app is distributed via Google Play and the company is included in the Android Choice Screen for Germany. The platform is built on Elasticsearch (Apache Lucene) within a Symfony (PHP) application stack, hosted on Hetzner infrastructure in Germany using 100% renewable energy, with EU-DSGVO/GDPR compliance as a stated baseline and ISO 27001 certification for the enterprise offering.
The company monetizes through three streams: a recurring €2/month premium subscription for ad-free consumer search, low-yield generic advertising on the free tier that requires no tracking cookies, and B2B licensing/implementation revenue from Nona Answers, an API-based site-search platform that is sold to banks, publishers, marketplaces, and public-sector entities with deployed logic hosted on ISO 27001-certified German infrastructure. The general web and image index is sourced from Brave Search rather than built in-house, and supplementary instant-answer features (Sofortantworten) pull structured data from third-party APIs including OpenWeatherMap, Alpha Vantage, ListenNotes, WestLotto, and tellows. Named enterprise customers include BBBank, Volksbanken, JUVE Verlag, EatHappy, and Chronoto.
Nona is a sub-10-person, self-financed ("eigenfinanziert") team led by managing director (Geschäftsführer) Alexander Kaiser, with no disclosed external venture funding, no parent company, and no M&A activity. Distribution is direct-to-consumer via the website and Google Play, with iOS users directed to a web-app workaround; enterprise go-to-market relies on Calendly-scheduled demos, direct phone/email outreach, and the dedicated answers.nona.de platform. Geographic focus is Germany and the broader German-speaking market, and the company publicly positioned itself as the leading German alternative after Neeva's shutdown in June 2023.
Nona firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Nona
- Legal name
- Nona Search Technologies GmbH
- Website
- https://nona.de
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2021
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Nona Search Technologies GmbH operates a Germany-based, privacy-focused consumer web search engine at nona.de with a €2/month ad-free premium tier, plus Nona Answers, an API-based enterprise site-search product sold to banks, publishers, and public administration from Cologne on GDPR-compliant infrastructure.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Where Nona is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Cologne
- HQ country
- Germany
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Nona business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B and B2C
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Premium Subscription: Ad-free premium subscription at €2/month (billed monthly). Users get completely ad-free search experience plus additional features. First 30 days free trial.
- Generic Advertising (Free Tier): Anonymous generic ads displayed over search queries on the free tier. Ads are contextually matched to search terms but not personalized. No tracking cookies required for ad serving.
- Enterprise Search Licensing (Nona Answers): B2B search technology licensing for websites, portals, marketplaces, and brands. Custom search solutions using Elasticsearch. Revenue from implementation, licensing, and potentially managed services.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Free Tier with Generic Ads |
| Subscription | Monthly | Ad-Free Premium |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels5 records
Nona product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Nona is a German privacy-first web search engine offering free search with generic non-tracking ads, an ad-free premium subscription at €2/month, and an enterprise B2B search platform (Nona Answers) that licenses API-based site search to brands, publishers, banks, and public-sector organizations. The product includes web search, image search, and interactive instant answers for weather, stocks, cryptocurrencies, phone lookups, lottery numbers, calculations, and QR/password generation.
Product overview
Nona is a German privacy-focused search engine consisting of a core search product and related services. The main Nona search engine offers free search with generic non-personalized ads and a €2/month ad-free premium tier. The product portfolio includes Sofortantworten (instant answers) providing real-time data like weather, stocks, and phone lookups, and Nona Answers, an enterprise search API product for websites and portals with hosted or on-premise deployment options.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Nona Answers: Enterprise search technology solution offering API-based search for websites, portals, marketplaces, and brands.
Products and services
- Nona Web Search Engine Consumer-facing privacy-first web and image search engine for German-speaking users; available in a free tier with generic non-personalized ads or an ad-free premium subscription, with advanced search operators, instant answers, and full EU-DSGVO compliance.
- Nona Premium (Ad-Free) Monthly subscription add-on (€2/month) for individual consumers that removes all advertising from Nona search and unlocks additional features; first 30 days free.
- Nona Answers Enterprise Search
Quantifiable outcome
- Reduced need for customer support through better search accuracy and organized results
- +1 more outcomes
Companies that use Nona
Customer profileNamed customers5 records
Segments2 records
Ideal customer profiles2 records
Nona technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration6 records
AI capability3 records
Feature3 records
Nona partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Eight partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- BravecoreProvides web search and image search results for Nona. Nona uses Brave's search index rather than Bing, as explicitly stated. Brave is a privacy-focused browser company.
- Alpha VantagecoreProvides stock market and cryptocurrency rate data for Nona's instant answers feature.
- OpenWeatherMapcoreWeather data provider for Nona's instant weather answer feature.
- ListenNotescorePodcast search data provider for Nona's podcast instant answers.
- WestLottocoreLottery number data provider for Nona's lottery instant answer feature.
- tellowscorePhone number lookup and reputation data provider for Nona's phone number check instant answer feature.
- HetznercoreWeb hosting provider. Nona's servers are hosted on Hetzner infrastructure in Germany.
- ElasticsearchcoreOpen source search and analytics engine (Apache Lucene-based) that forms the backbone of Nona's search technology. Nona has over 8 years of experience developing portals and applications with Elasticsearch.
Scale indicators3 records
Recent moves5 records
Expansion highlights5 records
Nona competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- Microsoft Bing: Microsoft Bing is a major search engine integrated across Windows, Edge, and Copilot. It is comparable to Nona as a broad web search incumbent, historically serving as the index provider for several smaller search engines and setting the baseline for ad-supported search economics.
- Google: Google is the dominant global search engine with default placements across Android, Chrome, and Safari. As the incumbent whose market share and bundled distribution Nona is attempting to chip away at, Google defines the competitive environment and scale benchmarks for any independent search engine.
Direct peers
- Brave Search: Brave Search is the privacy-focused search engine from Brave, which is also Nona's primary upstream index provider. It directly competes with Nona for European privacy-conscious users and offers a similar premium ad-free tier, while supplying Nona's web and image results — a unique data-vendor/competitor dual relationship.
- Mojeek: Mojeek is an independent UK-based crawler search engine with its own index and no tracking. It is comparable to Nona as one of the few truly independent search alternatives, sharing the niche positioning as a smaller European alternative to Google.
- Kagi: Kagi is a paid, ad-free, privacy-respecting search engine with a tiered subscription model. It is the closest premium-search comparable to Nona's €2/month paid tier and competes for the same high-intent users willing to pay for non-tracking search.
- MetaGer: MetaGer is a German non-profit privacy search engine operated by the SUMA-EV association. It is a direct comparable to Nona as a German-language, no-tracking, DSGVO-compliant search alternative targeting German-speaking privacy-conscious users.
- DuckDuckGo: DuckDuckGo is a US-based privacy-focused search engine serving consumers who want non-tracking search results. It directly competes with Nona in the European privacy search niche and offers a similar ad-supported free tier plus paid privacy Pro features, making it Nona's most prominent comparable.
- Qwant: Qwant is a French privacy-focused search engine that emphasizes EU data sovereignty and GDPR compliance. It competes directly with Nona for European privacy-conscious users and shares the regulatory moat of being an EU-based alternative to US search engines.
- Startpage: Startpage is a Dutch privacy search engine that delivers Google results without tracking. It competes head-to-head with Nona for European users who want Google-quality results without personalization, and shares the European GDPR-compliant data handling positioning.
- Ecosia: Ecosia is a Berlin-based search engine that funds reforestation with its profits. As a fellow German consumer search startup with privacy positioning and a non-tracking stance, it is a direct regional comparable and the most similar European competitor to Nona.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Nona social profiles
Digital presenceNona compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance2 records
Nona financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Nona leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
Nona funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Nona M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Nona
What does Nona do?
Nona is a German privacy-first web search engine offering free search with generic non-tracking ads, an ad-free premium subscription at €2/month, and an enterprise B2B search platform (Nona Answers) that licenses API-based site search to brands, publishers, banks, and public-sector organizations. The product includes web search, image search, and interactive instant answers for weather, stocks, cryptocurrencies, phone lookups, lottery numbers, calculations, and QR/password generation.
Is Nona a public or private company?
Nona is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was Nona founded?
Nona was founded in 2021. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Nona based?
Nona is headquartered in Cologne, Germany, in the Europe region.
How does Nona make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Premium Subscription is the primary driver. The others are generic Advertising (Free Tier) and enterprise Search Licensing (Nona Answers).
Who are Nona's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are Microsoft Bing and Google. Direct peers are Brave Search, Mojeek, Kagi, MetaGer, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Startpage and Ecosia.
Does Nona have an API?
Yes. Nona Answers offers an API-based architecture for enterprise search solutions. It can be used as a headless variant or optionally with the provided frontend. The platform provides a search API that can be integrated within minutes, enabling website, portal, marketplace, and brand search capabilities. Supports hosted or on-premise installation. Developer documentation is at answers.nona.de.