DDG followed by a !s (Startpage) if needed always gives me more and higher quality results than Google or any other combination of search engines I've tried. YMMV. Not sure there is any other privacy related search engine worth using. Brave feels pretty sketchy to me skimming ad dollars.

Been on brave search for a week roundabout. All of a sudden I got all these "fake-github" results I heard people speaking of, and which I never saw myself on DDG.

Try Kagi. I'm using it for months now and it's surprisingly good. It also has the !g and such bang characters, but I rarely need it.

Brave with the "mix in results from google" seems to be enough for me.