As of May 2024, Qwant was still using Bing according to Wikipedia reporting code audits and API tracing. They have been hiding their dependance on Bing APIs for years.
They acquired the French search engine Lilo in 2025 to sever ties to Bing apparently, so there's that.
What? being a french teatcher I should be delited by this news. Un fortunatly 10 students working on qwant in the same room is a total mess. Lags, feeling like beeing ddos from the same IP and stop answering for every one... Qwant (former using ms bing as motor) is far from being ready to compete...
The European Parliament is dropping Google for Qwant, a privacy-focused French search engine, as the default on MEPs' computers from June 4 — backing the EU's "digital sovereignty push", though Microsoft Office and other US dependencies are still very much in place.