duck.ai
DuckDuckGo's AI chat service offering anonymized access to several third-party language models.
HN commenters like duck.ai for private-by-default AI chat1234, free access to several models without signup567, and quick one-shot prompts that speed up search.8910 Caveats include smaller models that fall short of ChatGPT on harder tasks11 and a very small context limit.12
Why people recommend it
Privacy · 3
Paid for and recommended mainly because it is private by default and promises not to train on sessions.
“I pay for a subscription to Duck.ai mainly because I don't want to be constantly fighting my vendor to protect my privacy.”
“Shit like this is why I pay for duck.ai where the main selling point is that the product is private by default.”
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“Duck.ai is an interesting product, like Proton’s AI chatbot - both privacy preserving.”
Free access · 3
Usable for free with no signup, giving access to models like GPT nano/mini, Haiku, Mistral Small and Gemma.
“you may give Duck.ai[0] a try. It doesn't require any signup”
“all this in one day, with huge help of duck.ai which is completely free.”
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Quick prompts · 2
Handy for quick one-shot questions and simple short creative writing.
“Lately for quick one shot AI prompts I use duck.ai”
“I use duck.ai for simple stupid "creative" stuff like writing extremely short stories.”
Faster search · 1
Makes searching faster and more targeted while still giving links to verify.
“It makes searching faster and more targeted.”
Caveats and dissent
Weaker models · 1
One user found ChatGPT much better than duck.ai's mini models for complex Excel formulas.
“I found that ChatGPT is a lot better than the “mini” models on duck.ai.”
Small context · 1
The anonymized chat has a very small context limit.
“Lately for quick one shot AI prompts I use duck.ai”
Privacy durability · 1
One subscriber notes the no-training promise is not guaranteed if the company changes hands.
“I pay for a subscription to Duck.ai mainly because I don't want to be constantly fighting my vendor to protect my privacy.”
Product packaging · 1
One commenter slightly prefers Proton's lumo+ as a packaged product.
“Another option is DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai subscription, but I slightly prefer ProtonMail’s lumo+ packaging as a product.”
Often compared with
Threads where it came up
- Every AI model has the same "controversial" take on humans 1 mention
- Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training? 1 mention
- Stop Making TUIs 1 mention
- Google Search Is Dying. What Comes Next Is Worse 1 mention
- Ask HN: How do you use LLMs for private discussions? 1 mention
- Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI 1 mention
Also written as Duck.ai. Data: duck-ai.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 11
“I use duck.ai for simple stupid "creative" stuff like writing extremely short stories.”
“I pay for a subscription to Duck.ai mainly because I don't want to be constantly fighting my vendor to protect my privacy.”
“all this in one day, with huge help of duck.ai which is completely free.”
“It makes searching faster and more targeted.”
“you may give Duck.ai[0] a try. It doesn't require any signup”
“Another option is DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai subscription, but I slightly prefer ProtonMail’s lumo+ packaging as a product.”
“Lately for quick one shot AI prompts I use duck.ai”
“Shit like this is why I pay for duck.ai where the main selling point is that the product is private by default.”
“duck.ai has Haiku 3.5 in Free version”
“Duck.ai is an interesting product, like Proton’s AI chatbot - both privacy preserving.”
“I found that ChatGPT is a lot better than the “mini” models on duck.ai.”