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DuckDuckGo search

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

Setup

Section titled “Setup”

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

  1. Configure

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

Config

Section titled “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

Section titled “Tool parameters”
Search query. Results to return (1-10). DuckDuckGo region code (e.g. `us-en`, `uk-en`, `de-de`). SafeSearch level.

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

Notes

Section titled “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 the first key-free fallback (order 100) in auto-detection. API-backed providers with configured keys run first, then Ollama Web Search (order 110), then SearXNG (order 200)
  • SafeSearch defaults to moderate when not configured
Section titled “Related”