DuckDuckGo’s $9.99-per-month subscription now provides access to the most advanced AI models via its Duck.ai chatbot, including GPT-5, Claude Sonnet 4 and Llama Maverick. The free plan remains available, but only with older models such as GPT-4o mini or Claude 3.5 Haiku. The company stressed that subscribers will continue to benefit from its privacy features, including VPN, personal data removal and identity theft protection, while user data will not be used to train the models.
The expanded subscription, formerly known as Privacy Pro, now offers a one-stop solution for those wanting access to multiple premium AI models without juggling separate subscriptions, while enjoying DuckDuckGo's privacy guarantees including anonymised chats, no AI training with user data, local chat storage, and instant deletion. Recent Pew research shows that 27% of US adults use AI tools daily, yet 59% feel they have no control over how AI appears in their lives, which DuckDuckGo aims to address by adding more advanced models. These larger models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4o and GPT-5, Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4, and Meta's Llama Maverick, are better at following detailed instructions, maintaining context through extended chats, and delivering deeper, more nuanced responses.
The company stated it plans to introduce higher-tier, costlier plans in the future offering larger and more highly advanced models, though they did not specify whether the current plan has any usage limits. The subscription price remains unchanged across all regions at $9.99 USD/month or $99 USD/year, which is more cost-effective than maintaining multiple separate AI subscriptions, many of which are in the $20/month range. And now, users can request a 7-day free trial through the DuckDuckGo browser.
Sources:
Ivan Mehta
Gabriel Weinberg
Manish
