Which grows more useless everyday, arguably. I reckon I'll still stick with Kagi.

What does it have to do with Brave?

This is more private in some ways because more people use it. If you host your own searxng instance, Google/Brave/Bing can guess it's the same person that searches for all the things using the IP of your server.

so you have the ultra-cheap Mullvad service and it is fast enough for you? This is the same one where I can send in cash to Mullvad to pay - umm, the super-anonymous Mullvad VPN?

From their FAQ

What is the point of Leta?

Leta aims to present a reliable and trustworthy way of searching privately on the internet.

However, Leta is useless as a service if you use the perfect non-logging VPN, a privacy focussed DNS service, a web browser that resists fingerprinting, and correlation attacks from global actors. Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies.

For most people Leta can be useful, as the above conditions cannot ever truly be met by systems that are available today.

If you use their VPN and their browser or any firefox properly configured there is no reason to use Leta.

Not really. IMO, the determining factor for this is how "sticky" a given service is.

Leta is a public search engine that you don't have to pay for their VPN to use, and switching search engines is quite trivial, making this a very easy switch in the event that either service is unsatisfactory.

That said, I have no idea why anyone would want Google search results in 2025 because their search engine is terrible, but more power to anyone that does.