Best DuckDuckGo Proxies for Data Scraping in 2024

Are you looking for the best proxies to use for scraping DuckDuckGo? Then you are on the right page, as the article below recommends some of the best proxy providers you can purchase high-quality proxies from.

DuckDuckGo Proxies for Data Scraping

The DuckDuckGo search engine is known for its privacy-focused search experience, and those that fall out with the tracking and privacy-invasive nature of Google and Bing find it as a credible alternative. And if you do SEO or any form of mid to large-scale research on the platform, you will keep getting blocked. This is because even though it does not invade your privacy, it still needs to keep track of your IP address to do some minimal personalization and keep its platform safe from spam and bots. For you to avoid getting blocked, you need to make use of proxies.

When it comes to proxies for DuckDuckGo, not all proxies are fit. This is because the service has an effective anti-spam system that can detect low-quality proxies. You need undetectable proxies to scale through, especially if you will be doing automation on the platform. In this article, I will be recommending some of the best residential proxy providers; you can use their proxies as DuckDuckGo proxies.

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1. Bright Data — Overall Best Proxies for Scraping DuckDuckGo

• Average Success Rate: 99.07% Obtained on my VPS in Los Angeles
• Proxy Download Speed: 36.93 Mbps
• Response Time: 763 ms
• Cost: Starts from $10.5 per GB

The Bright Data service is regarded as the market leader in the proxy market. It is the best provider I will recommend if you are OK with doing KYC and can afford it now at cheap pricing. The service has over 72 million residential IPs in its pool, which you can use to scrape as many pages from the DuckDuckGo SERPs as you want. One thing you will like about the service is that its IPs are undetectable. It is also fast, as I recorded a download speed of 36.93 Mbps with a response time of 763 ms.

With its IP rotation capabilities, you can get as many IPs as you need to scrape DuckDuckGo without getting blocked. I did a performance test a while back and recorded over 80% unique IPs, which is impressive. The network does have IPs in all of the countries of the world, most states, and major cities. This makes it possible for you to choose IPs from a specific geo-location to scrape geo-targeted content on the SERP. The IPs are sourced ethically, and Bright Data offers you some of the advanced features you can get from a proxy provider.

You can choose the IP rotation time, which gives you power over the session control. Pricing for the service has become a lot cheaper as you can get a starter with 1GB for $10.50. However, the more bandwidth you purchase,  the cheaper the price per GB becomes.

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2. Soax — Clean Proxy Pool for DuckDuckGo Scraping

• Average Success Rate: 97.53% Obtained on my VPS in Los Angeles
• Proxy Download Speed: 27.45 Mbps
• Response Time: 861 ms
• Cost: Starts from $99 for 15 GB

Soax is one unique provider out there. It has one of the cleanest proxy pools in the market because of its constant monitoring of the proxy pool to remove bad IPs. This reduces the number of dropped connections and request timeouts. This makes it some of the best for DuckDuckGo scraping. It was mentioned on their website that they have over 155 million IPs in their pool which I find difficult to believe as the number of IPs in their top locations does not conform with that.

Previously though, it was mentioned they have 5 million residential IPs in their pool. The network has over 100 countries supported, and for the supported countries, you can scrape the country version or data of a keyword from the DuckDuckGo SERPs. The performance of their residential proxies is also good, with a download speed of 27.45 Mbps and a response time of 861 ms.

My major problem with this provider is its pricing. Even though proxies have become a lot cheaper for even the top providers, Soax still maintains its minimum monetary commitment of $99, which is considered expensive for most small marketers. If you can afford this, the cost per GB is $6.60, which is considered cheaper.

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3. Smartproxy — Fastest Residential Proxies for DuckDuckGo

• Average Success Rate: 96.93% Obtained on my VPS in Los Angeles
• Proxy Download Speed: 34.81 Mbps
• Response Time: 672 ms
• Cost: Starts from $8.50 per GB

Smartproxy is another provider I recommend for scraping DuckDuckGo keyword and ranking data. The residential IPs in their pool are some of the most most undetectable IPs as they are sourced via devices of real Internet users making them undetectable. Currently, the service has over 55 million residential IPs in its pool, providing you with enough IPs you will need to carry out any scale of data scraping on DuckDuckGo.

It also has support for all of the countries in the world, just like Bright Data, making it possible for you to scrape geo-targeted and locational data from the DuckDuckGo platform. In terms of performance, Smartproxy also goes head-to-head with Bright Data. While Bright Data is slightly better in terms of download speed, as the download speed of Smartproxy is 34.81 Mbps, Smartproxy is faster in terms of response time. I recorded a response time of 672 ms.

Smartproxy is also quite cheap as its pay-as-you-go pricing starts from $8.5 per GB. And if you go for their packaged plans, the cost per GB becomes cheaper due to discounts applied.

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4. ProxyEmpire — Support Bandwidth Rollover

• Average Success Rate: 95.95% Obtained on my VPS in Los Angeles
• Proxy Download Speed: 21.62 Mbps
• Response Time: 975 ms
• Cost: Starts from $15 per GB

All of the providers above do have one problem; their proxies are charged based on bandwidth and expire after 30 days. This becomes an issue for those that are not heavy users. If you are not a heavy user and want to always roll over your remaining bandwidth to the next subscription, then ProxyEmpire is a good option. The service does have its issues, though, as it has a little over 5 million IPs which makes it only useful for small to mid-scale projects.

If your project is within this group, then this provider works and can be used for scraping DuckDuckGo. With ProxyEmpire, you can scrape DuckDuckGo data, including their geo-targeted data. Some of the features this service offers include IP rotation, unlimited threads, city, and ISP level targeting, as well as support for both HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 protocols.

In terms of performance, ProxyEmpire is quite basic — with a download speed of 21.62 Mbps and 975 ms. This provider does offer a pay-as-you-go option at a price of $15 per GB, which is expensive compared to Bright Data and Smartproxy. However, its rollover support is an advantage. If that is not important to you, then Bright Data or Smartproxy are the recommended options.

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5. ASocks — Cheapest Residential Proxies for Scraping DuckDuckGo

• Average Success Rate: 94.38% Obtained on my VPS in Los Angeles
• Proxy Download Speed: 21.84 Mbps
• Response Time: 864 ms
• Cost: Starts from $3 per GB

If you are on a low budget and need a provider that ticks all of the boxes and is still cheap, then the ASocks service is the provider for you. The pricing is straightforward — they operate on a pay-as-you-go basis with $3 as the price per GB. This makes it the cheapest you can get. Even though it is this cheap, the IP addresses it offers are quite undetectable against many targets, including DuckDuckGo.

Currently, the service has over 7 million IP addresses which you can use to scrape data from the search engine without getting blocked. Because it has got support for over 150 countries across the globe, it becomes possible for you to collect geo-targeted data for specific countries. In terms of performance, it is average, I recorded a download speed of 21.84 Mbps with a response time of 864 ms. As a new user, there is a free trial for you to try out.

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6. Hydraproxy — Support Unlimited Endpoint Generation

• Average Success Rate: 97.94% Obtained on my VPS in Los Angeles
• Proxy Download Speed: 19.69 Mbps
• Response Time: 885 ms
• Cost: Starts from $5 per GB

The Hydraproxy is another provider I recommend for scraping data from the privacy-focused search engine. It can be regarded as one of the smaller providers on the list and is in the same league as the likes of ASocks. Its proxy pool has a little over 5 million IP addresses. As a subscriber, you are given access to the pool and charged based on bandwidth consumption. I have used their proxies to scrape not only DuckDuckGo but also other search engines, including Google.

One thing you will come to like about this service is its support for proxy list generation. Using this, you can generate as many proxy endpoints as you want at no extra cost. This makes it perfect for your distributed DuckDuckGo scraping task. Its download speed, as recorded by me, is 19.69 Mbps, and response time is 885 ms.

Even though this is not breaking any record, this speed can still be regarded as fast for a residential proxy. Pricing for their proxies is charged at $5 per GB. However, the more bandwidth the purchase, the cheaper the price per GB becomes.

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FAQs

Q. Why Do You Need Proxies for Scraping DuckDuckGo?

The DuckDuckGo wants you to believe they do not look at any of your information. However, your IP address isn’t one of the things they don’t look and one of the reasons they store this is to keep their website protected against spam. Without proxies, your web scraper will get blocked after a few attempts. You need proxies to get as many IP addresses as you need to successfully scrape the required data without getting blocked. With proxies, you can also collect SERP data for regions you are not in since DuckDuckGo also geo-targets the content of its SERPs.

Q. Is Scraping DuckDuckGo Illegal?

As with other search engines, the DuckDuckGo service does not allow scraping of its content, and it has put in place anti-bot systems to discourage that. However, this does not make it illegal. In the face of the law, web scraping publicly available data is considered legal, provided you don’t harm your target server. However, you shouldn’t take this as legal advice. Instead, you should discuss with a competent legal practitioner to determine the legality based on your specific project.

Q. Will Only Proxies Proxies Prevent Blocking?

Proxies are meant to provide you protection against IP tracking and blocking. Aside from IP tracking and blocking, anti-spam systems of search engines use other techniques to protect against scraping. You need to look for honeypots, rotate headers, have an anti-captcha system in place, and many other techniques. Generally, the magnitude of your task will determine a lot of things regarding the methods you should use to stay protected against getting banned.

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Conclusion

Looking at the above, you can see that there are only 6 providers mentioned. However, the list goes way higher than this. However, I choose the best based on the bucket list of providers I track. So you can tell the proxies from the above are the best in our case. While you can use any other provider, the above is a tested and trusted list and, as such, will save you from any form of trial and error that might not end well.