Privacy-focused consumer technology company DuckDuckGo announced on Thursday that its subscription service, launched last year, will allow users to access the latest AI models through the Duck.ai platform without additional fees.
The subscription plan originally included features such as a VPN service, personal information cleanup, and identity theft restoration. It has now added an AI chatbot service. The Duck.ai chatbot is available for free, allowing users to access multiple AI models, including Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Haiku, Meta's Llama 4 Scout, Mistral AI's Mistral Small 324B, and OpenAI's GPT-4o mini.
With DuckDuckGo's $9.99 monthly paid plan, users can also access more advanced models, including OpenAI's GPT-4o and GPT-5, Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4, and Meta's Llama Maverick.
DuckDuckGo stated in a blog post: "These larger-scale models perform better in following detailed instructions, maintaining long conversation contexts, and providing deeper, more detailed responses. The DuckDuckGo subscription service provides access to these models while offering stronger privacy protection."
This service is a good choice for users who want to use the latest AI models without being limited to a single provider. In comparison, Quora's Poe platform also offers access to various models, with subscription prices starting at $5 per month.
DuckDuckGo said the company will continue to add more expensive plans to its paid products to provide "larger, more advanced models." However, the company did not specify whether there are usage restrictions on current plans.
This move reflects the growing competition in the AI chatbot market, with platforms seeking to attract users by integrating multiple AI models. For users who value privacy protection, DuckDuckGo's service is more appealing because the company is known for not tracking user data.
It remains unclear whether DuckDuckGo will further expand its AI service capabilities or introduce higher-tier subscription plans to meet the needs of enterprise users.
