DuckAssistBot: DuckDuckGo Search Assist Crawler
DuckAssistBot fetches pages in real time for DuckDuckGo Search Assist answers. Its user agent, IP list, and the robots.txt opt-out.
DuckAssistBot is the crawler that DuckDuckGo uses for Search Assist, the AI-written answers in its search results. It fetches pages in real time, and DuckDuckGo says that the data does not train AI models. If you do not want your pages used as sources for these answers, disallow DuckAssistBot in robots.txt. The opt-out does not change your normal search rankings.
What DuckAssistBot does
The DuckAssistBot help page says that the bot crawls pages in real time for AI-assisted answers, and that these answers cite their sources. The help page states that this data does not train AI models. The DuckDuckGo AI Chat guide describes Search Assist and Duck.ai.
User agent
The help page gives this user agent:
DuckAssistBot/1.2; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.html)The robots.txt token is DuckAssistBot.
Opt out with robots.txt
robots.txt is a text file at the root of a site that gives rules to crawlers (RFC 9309). If you do not want DuckAssistBot to crawl your site, add this group:
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Disallow: /The help page says that the change takes effect after 72 hours, and then DuckAssistBot stops crawling your site. If the opt-out does not work, contact [email protected].
What a block changes
A block removes your pages as possible sources for Search Assist answers. The help page says that the opt-out does not affect organic search rankings. It also does not change whether your site appears in DuckDuckGo search results.
DuckAssistBot and DuckDuckBot
DuckDuckGo runs a second crawler, DuckDuckBot, for its search results. A robots.txt group for one bot does not apply to the other.
| Bot | Purpose | User agent | IP list |
|---|---|---|---|
| DuckAssistBot | Real-time fetches for Search Assist answers | DuckAssistBot/1.2; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.html) |
duckassistbot.json |
| DuckDuckBot | Crawling to improve DuckDuckGo search results | DuckDuckBot/1.1; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot.html) |
duckduckbot.json |
Verify requests
The help page lists the IP addresses of DuckAssistBot, and the same list is in duckassistbot.json. Make sure that the source IP of a request is in that list. The help page gives no reverse DNS host name.
On October 22, 2026, both JSON files held the same 486 addresses. So the IP address shows that a request came from DuckDuckGo, but not which bot sent it. Use the user agent to tell the two bots apart.