Is www.qwant.com legit or a scam?
Qwant is an established French privacy search engine with 12+ years of operation, clean security scans, and positive user reviews — no fraud indicators detected.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
MT Intelligence
Qwant operates as a genuine privacy-focused search engine launched in 2013 and headquartered in Paris. Our technical scans show zero malware detections across 92 engines, a clean hosting IP with no abuse reports, and valid SSL encryption. The domain is 6,068 days old (over 16 years), registered with Gandi and privacy-protected appropriately. Web research confirms the company is actively registered in France, owned by Synfonium and the French government's Caisse des dépôts et consignations, and is officially promoted by the French government and used as the default search engine by the European Parliament. Independent reviews on TechRadar, the App Store (4.7 stars), and SourceForge praise its privacy protections and long-term reliability. No scam reports, fraud accusations, or malware complaints appear in any search results. The only criticism found relates to regulatory compliance discussions around data handling with Microsoft for advertising — a transparency issue, not a scam.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for www.qwant.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Qwant is a legitimate French privacy-focused search engine launched in 2013, headquartered in Paris, with over 12 years of operation (domain age matches).
- Markets itself as not storing search history, not selling personal data, and hosted in Europe; positively reviewed for privacy by TechRadar and users on App Store/SourceForge.
- Has faced criticism and regulatory scrutiny: in Feb 2025, France's CNIL issued a compliance reminder that data sent to Microsoft for advertising was pseudonymised (not anonymous) and lacked proper transparency.
- Historically relied heavily on Bing API for results (similar results noted on Wikipedia/Reddit); has worked to build its own index but still partners with Microsoft and others.
- No scam reports, malware, or fraud accusations found across searches for "scam", "fraud", or complaints; discussed on Reddit/PrivacyGuides mainly around actual privacy level and result quality.
- Available on Google Play (3.2 stars) and App Store (4.7 stars); mixed user feedback on app bugs vs. privacy benefits.
- Used as default search engine by European Parliament (recently) and officially promoted by French government.
- TechRadaropen
"If privacy is your top priority when using a search engine, Qwant is one of the best platforms out there."
- App Storeopen
"THEY DON’T COLLECT COOKIES!! They don’t take your personal information. That don’t sell your information... you’ll never have to worry about identity theft with this search engine."
- SourceForgeopen
"It's private, doesn't customize results, faster than the rest, pretty aesthetics, and based in France... I have been using this search engine for more than five years."
French company founded 2011/2013 in Nice/Paris, headquartered in Paris, owned by Synfonium (Miroslaw & Octave Klaba 75%) and Caisse des dépôts et consignations (25%). Actively used by European Parliament and promoted by French government.
Web research confirms Qwant is a legitimate French privacy-focused search engine founded in 2013 and headquartered in Paris. The company is actively registered in France, owned by Synfonium (75%) and the French government's Caisse des dépôts et consignations (25%). It is officially used as the default search engine by the European Parliament and promoted by the French government.
No scam reports, fraud accusations, or malware complaints were found. Positive reviews appear on TechRadar (praising privacy protections), the App Store (4.7-star rating, users highlighting no cookie collection and no personal data sales), and SourceForge (long-term users reporting 5+ years of reliable use). The only regulatory discussion found relates to France's CNIL issuing a compliance reminder in February 2025 regarding data sent to Microsoft for advertising — a transparency issue, not a scam or fraud matter.
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No contact email found anywhere on the page.
- No phone number listed on the page.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Links to 5 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on www.qwant.com and not a lookalike like w-ww.qwant.com.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on www.qwant.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- www.qwant.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 84/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. www.qwant.com presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Gandi · Gandi RSA Domain Validation Secure Server CA 3, expiring in 34 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- www.qwant.com is 16.6 years old, registered on 10/28/2009 through Gandi SAS. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report www.qwant.com as clean.
- No. www.qwant.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- www.qwant.com resolves to an IP operated by OVH SAS in FR (usage type: Data Center/Web Hosting/Transit). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- This is a permanent record of the scan run on June 9, 2026. The verdict and evidence above reflect that scan and do not change on their own. If circumstances around www.qwant.com have changed, MalwareTips staff can run a fresh scan, which re-runs every check from scratch and publishes an updated report.
User reviews & comments(0)
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