Does DuckDuckGo train on your data?
DuckDuckGo publishes what its Duck.ai model providers may not do: use your prompts and outputs to develop or improve their models. DuckDuckGo itself keeps no chats to train on.
No opt-out found in this policy
"In addition, we have agreements in place with all model providers that further limit how they can use data from these anonymous requests, including not using Prompts and Outputs to develop or improve their models"
- 5 Oct 2026
- All accounts
- global
- Fetched from the company
- B5DE44DF…9317
How we read it: Regraded UNCLEAR to B on 1 September 2026, on a document DuckDuckGo published on 26 August and this site had not read: the main policy pointed to it for Duck.ai, and the entry stopped at the pointer. Followed, it answers the gap the entry had named — what the providers may do. They may not use your prompts or outputs "to develop or improve their models", must delete what they receive within 30 days, and never see your IP address. DuckDuckGo builds no models and keeps no chats. B rather than A because the commitment is contractual — "we have agreements in place" — rather than a stated inability. The clause stops where its sentence turns to retention; the rest is quoted below.
opt out, train, develop or improve, delete, saved, Zero Data Retention
What the document does offer
- Duck.ai privacy policy, captured 2026-09-01: the agreements clause quoted here, which continues "as well as deleting all information received once it is no longer necessary to provide Outputs (at most within 30 days, with limited exceptions for safety and legal compliance)"
- same policy: "All metadata that contains personal information (for example, your IP address) is removed before sending Prompts to underlying model providers"
- same policy: recent chats "saved locally on your device, unless you opt out of saving recent chats altogether" — a control over local saving, not over training, which is not on
- same policy: "Zero Data Retention and Zero Provider Visibility" on some models, described per chat
- main privacy policy, captured 2026-08-30: "We don't save or share your search, chat, or browsing history when you search on DuckDuckGo, chat on Duck.ai, or use our apps and extensions."
Why none of it applies: Nothing is on by default that an opt-out would need to reach: DuckDuckGo does not train, and the providers are barred from it by agreement. The controls the documents offer are over saving and sharing your own chats.
What each plan can refuse
The same questions, asked of every plan we could identify. Every cell comes from a quoted clause or a documented search - see the evidence above.
- Nothing to switch off
- Not stated
- 15 / 100
- Yes, stated
- Unknown
How to opt out of DuckDuckGo AI training
Plan by plan, from what DuckDuckGo's own policy says about refusing. Where it publishes the steps, they're listed here with the limits they carry. Where there's nothing to switch off, or nothing graded, this says so instead of inventing a menu path.
All accounts
Nothing to switch off: DuckDuckGo's policy says training is off here.
What this policy has done since we started watching
1 change detected since 30 Aug 2026. Each one is a diff between two archived copies, and each links to the passage that moved.
Vendor response
We haven't yet written to DuckDuckGo about this verdict, and they haven't disputed, clarified or announced a change to any clause quoted above. When either happens it's published here, word for word.
Report a wrong clauseMore privacy tools on file
All 13 in privacy-tools →Show this verdict on your site
DuckDuckGo is graded B, and a company that's earned that can say so with the verdict itself. The image below links back to this page and shows the live grade. If the grade changes, the badge changes the same day, wherever it's embedded. It's free and it isn't for sale.
