DuckDuckGo Search

DuckDuckGo Search

OpenClaw supports DuckDuckGo as a key-free web_search provider. No API key or account is required.

DuckDuckGo is an experimental, unofficial integration that pulls results from DuckDuckGo’s non-JavaScript search pages — not an official API. Expect occasional breakage from bot-challenge pages or HTML changes.

Setup

No API key needed — just set DuckDuckGo as your provider:

1. Configure

   bash openclaw configure --section web # Select "duckduckgo" as the provider

Config

{
  tools: {
    web: {
      search: {
        provider: "duckduckgo",
      },
    },
  },
}

Optional plugin-level settings for region and SafeSearch:

{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      duckduckgo: {
        config: {
          webSearch: {
            region: "us-en", // DuckDuckGo region code
            safeSearch: "moderate", // "strict", "moderate", or "off"
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

Tool parameters

Parameter	Description
query	Search query (required)
count	Results to return (1-10, default: 5)
region	DuckDuckGo region code (e.g. us-en, uk-en, de-de)
safeSearch	SafeSearch level: strict, moderate (default), or off

Region and SafeSearch can also be set in plugin config (see above) — tool parameters override config values per-query.

Notes

• No API key — works out of the box, zero configuration
• Experimental — gathers results from DuckDuckGo’s non-JavaScript HTML search pages, not an official API or SDK
• Bot-challenge risk — DuckDuckGo may serve CAPTCHAs or block requests under heavy or automated use
• HTML parsing — results depend on page structure, which can change without notice
• Auto-detection order — DuckDuckGo is checked last (order 100) in auto-detection, so any API-backed provider with a key takes priority
• SafeSearch defaults to moderate when not configured

For production use, consider Brave Search (free tier available) or another API-backed provider.

Related

• Web Search overview — all providers and auto-detection
• Brave Search — structured results with free tier
• Exa Search — neural search with content extraction

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This page is sourced from openclaw/openclaw.