ddgs

What it is and what it does

DDGS is a metasearch library that queries multiple web search engines and aggregates their results into a unified Python API. It supports text, image, video, news, and book searches across backends like Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Brave, and others, with optional regional and content-filtering parameters. The library also includes an optional distributed hash table (DHT) network for peer-to-peer result caching, an HTTP API server, and an MCP server for integration with tools like Claude Desktop.

The package is built on httpx, lxml, and fake-useragent to handle HTTP requests and parsing. It's designed for developers who need programmatic access to aggregated search results without building individual integrations for each search engine. The DHT network is experimental but aims to reduce rate limiting and latency by sharing cached results anonymously among users.

Use it for:

• Build a search aggregator tool that queries multiple engines and returns deduplicated or ranked results
• Integrate web search into a Python application without managing individual API keys for each search engine
• Run a local API server to expose search functionality to other services or web frontends
• Use the MCP server to add search capabilities to Claude Desktop or other MCP-compatible clients
• Participate in the DHT network to benefit from cached results and reduce individual rate-limit pressure

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Aggregates web search results from multiple search engines (Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Brave, and others) through a single Python API, with optional distributed caching via DHT network.

Yes. The package is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, uses a permissive MIT license, and offers low-friction installation. It solves a real problem—aggregating results from multiple search engines—with a clean API. The DHT network is beta but transparent to existing code. Install it if you need programmatic multi-engine search; skip it only if you require a single specific search engine's API or have strict Windows-only requirements.

Install

ddgs on PyPI

pip install ddgs

uv add ddgs

poetry add ddgs

Installing ddgs

Before you install

Low friction install with a pure-Python wheel. Active maintenance with recent commits and 2892 repository stars. Supports Python 3.10 through 3.14.

License in practice

MIT license permits commercial and private use with minimal restrictions, making it safe for most projects.

Quickstart

pip install ddgs

from ddgs import DDGS

results = DDGS().text("python programming", max_results=5)
print(results)

Requires Python 3.10 or later. DHT network features require Linux or macOS; Windows users must use the base package without distributed caching.

Verify before relying

• Whether rate limiting behavior differs meaningfully across the supported backends (Bing, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Google, etc.)
• Actual latency improvements from DHT network participation at different network sizes below 50 nodes
• Whether the MCP server integration works with all Claude Desktop versions and Cursor configurations

Package facts

Evidence: ddgs-9.14.4-py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: python, search, metasearch

Tags

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