 This paper proposes a novel evolutionary algorithm called Subtraction Average-Based Optimizer, SABO. It uses a subtraction average of searchers to update the positions of individuals in the search space. The algorithm was tested on 52 benchmark functions from the CEC 2017 test suite and compared, against other popular meta-heuristics. The results showed that SABO provided better performance than all other algorithms. Additionally, SABO was applied to four engineering design problems and found to be effective in optimizing the designs. This article was authored by Pavel Trojovsky and Mohamed Deghani.