DuckDuckGo search

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

# Setup

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

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

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 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

# Related

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