duckduckgo-mcp

Overview

DuckDuckGo MCP is a lightweight Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that integrates DuckDuckGo's search engine into AI assistants and agents. It enables real-time web searches, webpage content retrieval, and intelligent parsing without relying on tracking-heavy alternatives.

Built primarily in Python (with TypeScript forks available), it is designed for seamless integration with tools like Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible environments.

Features

• Web Search Tool: Perform searches via DuckDuckGo with support for advanced parameters, safe search, and result limits.
• Content Fetching & Parsing: Retrieve and convert full webpages into clean Markdown or structured JSON, often using readers like Jina for LLM-friendly output.
• Rate Limiting & Reliability: Built-in protections against abuse and error handling for robust performance.
• LLM-Optimized Formatting: Results are structured with metadata, summaries, and clean text ideal for large language models.
• Privacy-Focused: Leverages DuckDuckGo's no-tracking philosophy.
• Easy Installation: Quick start with uvx duckduckgo-mcp-server or Docker images.

Quick Start

# Install and run via uvx
uvx duckduckgo-mcp-server

# Or add to Claude/Code
claude mcp add ddg-search uvx duckduckgo-mcp-server

Available as a PyPI package (pip install duckduckgo-mcp-server) and community Docker images.

Use Cases

• Enhancing AI coding assistants with up-to-date documentation and library references.
• Real-time research and fact-checking in conversational agents.
• Building autonomous agents that need web access for news, articles, or data gathering.
• Privacy-conscious workflows avoiding Google or Bing APIs.

Technical Details

The server implements the MCP specification to expose tools that AI clients can discover and call dynamically. It supports multiple search types (web, news, images, videos in some variants) and includes configurable options for region, date filtering, and pagination.

Multiple community implementations exist, including the popular nickclyde version and TypeScript ports.

Alternatives

Other MCP search servers exist for different providers (e.g., Exa, Tavily), but DuckDuckGo stands out for its simplicity, privacy, and zero-cost API access.

Note: This is a community project and not officially affiliated with DuckDuckGo.