Yeah I was using Brave search very recently. I opted for it because as far as I can recall, they have their own crawlers/indexers or whatever they're called.

I switched recently to self-hosting SearXNG and although SearXNG doesn't have its own crawlers, I can still use Brave search results (and basically most other search engine results) that I want.

Admittedly though, I'm lazy and my solution isn't as polished as Brave.

independent index, no ties to google (unless you let it) or bing unlike most of these

ai is optional (you don’t have to add “-ai” every time, i switched it off once first use and never saw it again)

and it brings up the convert tool quickly when you search what something is in a different unit of measurement, like so (only SE other than google i know of that does that):

Several of your alternatives ALSO have AI summaries and/or agents included in their services.

How about some examples that don't include that particular "feature" set?

Qwant is excellent IMHO

I would suggest adding PeerTube as a YouTube alternative as well, and, reading what GrapheneOS posted recently about Murena and /e/, I don't know if it should be recommended at all.

Also for Maps: Organic Maps and CoMaps!