ddgs-mcp

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that exposes DDGS (Dux Distributed Global Search) — a keyless, multi-engine web metasearch — to AI agents.

It is a drop-in, more reliable alternative to a single SearXNG instance: instead of one upstream that gets IP-banned and poisons every query, DDGS fans each call out over several backends (DuckDuckGo, Bing, Brave, Google, Mojeek, Startpage, Yahoo, Wikipedia, ...) and deduplicates the union. If one engine rate-limits you, the others still answer.

No API key. No account. Runs over stdio via uvx, matching the other MCP servers in this stack.

Install / run

uvx ddgs-mcp                 # from PyPI (once published)
uvx --from git+https://github.com/marcinkuk/ddgs-mcp.git ddgs-mcp   # direct from git

For local development:

cd ddgs-mcp
uv sync
uv run ddgs-mcp

Related MCP server: DuckDuckGo Search MCP Server

Tools

Each search tool accepts backend="auto" (randomized multi-engine, the default and most resilient) or a specific backend name, plus region, timelimit (d/w/m/y) and max_results.

All tools return a uniform envelope {"ok": bool, "engine": str, "count": int, "results": [...]}; on failure ok=false with a hint telling the agent how to retry (e.g. switch to auto or a different region).

Configuration (environment)

Agent Canvas registration

Register with a stdio MCP entry (no secrets required):

{
  "ddgs": {
    "transport": "stdio",
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/marcinkuk/ddgs-mcp.git", "ddgs-mcp"],
    "enabled": true,
    "description": "Keyless DDGS metasearch (DuckDuckGo/Bing/Brave/Google) + page extraction. Resilient SearXNG alternative."
  }
}

If you want ban-resistance, add an env entry for a rotating proxy:

"env": {"DDGS_PROXY": "http://127.0.0.1:1080"}

The value is stored through the normal MCP config path (Fernet-encrypted at rest like the other secrets) — never commit it to this repo.

Why this over SearXNG?

• Resilience: multi-backend aggregation survives single-engine bans (your exact banuję mnie symptom).

• No key / no server: nothing to host; uvx self-heals on container/image upgrades like trailsearch-mcp.

• Extraction: web_extract gives clean markdown of a page in one call.

Keep searxng registered alongside it if you like; the two can coexist and you can pick per query.

License

MIT.