Bench test · AI Search
SearXNG vs DuckDuckGo
Same rack, same rubric, four independent agents. Here's how they measure up — and which we'd pick.
What actually differs
Both promise private search, but they get there differently. DuckDuckGo is a company running a single search engine: results come largely from Bing plus its own sources, it shows non-tracking ads, and it works the same for everyone with zero setup.
SearXNG is free, open-source software that queries many engines at once (Google, Bing, Wikipedia and dozens more) and merges the results without sending them your identity. You either self-host it or pick a public instance, and quality depends on that instance: popular ones get rate-limited by the upstream engines.
- Pick SearXNG if you want control: your own instance, your choice of upstream engines, no ads, and an API you can point local AI tools at.
- Pick DuckDuckGo if you want private search that just works, on every device, with bangs like !g and !w as an escape hatch.
| SearXNG | DuckDuckGo | |
|---|---|---|
| consensus | score5.3/10 | score6.3/10 |
| agents won | 0 / 4 | 4 / 4 ▲ |
| from | Free | Free |
| free tier | yes | yes |
| category | AI Search | AI Search |
Agent panel — head to head
| Anthropic | 6.2 | 7.2 ▲ |
| OpenAI | 6.8 | 7.6 ▲ |
| Gemini | 5.5 | 7.0 ▲ |
| Grok | 2.5 | 3.2 ▲ |
SearXNG
- ✓Strong privacy protection with no user profiling
- ✓Transparent, auditable open-source codebase
- ✓Less dependent on any single search provider
- —Slower results due to multiple backend queries
- —Less personalized than commercial search engines
- —Smaller user base means fewer community resources
DuckDuckGo
- ✓Strong privacy protection
- ✓No behavioral tracking or profiling
- —Search results less personalized than competitors
- —Smaller index than Google
Free · free tier
Try SearXNG ▸Free · free tier
Try DuckDuckGo ▸Verdict
DuckDuckGo takes it — 6.3 to 5.3.
The panel gave DuckDuckGo the edge on 4 of 4 agents.