56 Latest DuckDuckGo Statistics (2024 Growth & User Stats)

Looking for the latest DuckDuckGo statistics? You’re in the right place.

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine and browser app positioned as a privacy-friendly alternative to Google. 

This focus on privacy has helped propel the company’s growth since it was founded back in 2008. But widespread backlash following a recent tracking controversy has threatened to reverse that growth.

In this post, we’ll be sharing some eye-opening statistics that tell us more about the current state of DuckDuckGo, and which answer important questions, such as:

• How many people use DuckDuckGo?
• Who uses DuckDuckGo?
• Is DuckDuckGo profitable?
• How does DuckDuckGo compare to competitors like Google?
• How many daily searches does DuckDuckGo handle?

Plus many more! 

DuckDuckGo search traffic statistics

First, let’s look at some statistics that reveal how much search traffic DuckDuckGo gets:

• There have been around 122 billion searches on DuckDuckGo in the 14 years since it was launched.

(DuckDuckGo¹) 

However, the vast majority of those searches have been made in the last few years:

• In 2010, there were only around 16.4 million searches on DuckDuckGo BUT…
• In 2021, there were over 35.3 billion searches on DuckDuckGo.

(DuckDuckGo¹) 

This means that:

• There was around a 215,000% increase in searches on DuckDuckGo from 2010 to 2021. Or in other words, searches last year were x2152 greater than in 2010.

We also know from the data that…

• There have been around 23.35 billion queries on DuckDuckGo at the time of writing this post. 

(DuckDuckGo¹) 

From this figure, we can project there will be around 35.65 billion queries by the end of 2022.

DuckDuckGo daily search trends

One of the main questions people want to know is: is DuckDuckGo growing? To answer that question, we can look at the average daily search volumes across the year and see if they’re trending up or down.

Here’s a breakdown of average daily search volumes for each month this year:

• January 2022: 106 million
• February 2022: 105.5 million
• March 2022: 102.7 million
• April 2022: 97.7 million
• May 2022: 96.3 million
• June 2022: 93.2 million
• July 2022: 92.4 million
• August 2022: 93.6 million

(DuckDuckGo¹) 

As you can see, daily average search volumes peaked in January 2022 and have been dropping since then. The biggest drop was from March to April, when average daily searches dropped below 100million for the first time in 2022. 

This drop coincided with DuckDuckGo’s privacy blunder. Around that time, a security researcher found that the mobile DuckDuckGo browser wasn’t blocking Microsoft trackers on third-party websites due to a ‘search syndication agreement’. 

The backlash this sparked might have had something to do with the decline in daily searches. However, we can also see that search volumes increased by 1.2 million in August, which suggests the tide may be starting to turn in DuckDuckGo’s favor once again.

Here’s another fun fact about daily searches: 

• The highest number of DuckDuckGo searches in a single day is around 111.7 million. That record was achieved on 17th January 2022.

(DuckDuckGo¹) 

How many users does DuckDuckGo have?

Nobody knows exactly how many users DuckDuckGo has as unlike most other search engines, it doesn’t track its users. However, we can have a pretty good guess based on data:

• DuckDuckGo had an estimated 70-100 million users as of June 2021. This estimate is based on market share estimates, download figures, and surveys.

(Spread Privacy²)

DuckDuckGo user demographics

Wondering who the average DuckDuckGo user is? Let’s look at some DuckDuckGo usage statistics to find out:

• More DuckDuckGo users are male (73.3%) than female (26.7%).
• The largest age group amongst DuckDuckGo users is 25 to 34 years old. This age group makes up 26.42% of all DuckDuckGo users on desktop.
• 18-24-year-olds is the second largest age group of DuckDuckGo users, at 19.37%
• Only 8.93% of DuckDuckGo users are aged 65+

(Similarweb)

DuckDuckGo user interests

According to data from Similarweb:

• The top browsing interest of DuckDuckGo users by category is ‘Adult’.
• The top browsing interest of DuckDuckGo users by topic is ‘News’.

(Similarweb)

DuckDuckGo’s focus on privacy and anonymity may be the reason that it’s popular amongst users searching for adult content.

Which country uses DuckDuckGo the most?

We can look at data from Similarweb to see a breakdown of which countries DuckDuckGo’s traffic is coming from. Here’s what the stats show:

• Almost half (49%) of DuckDuckGo traffic comes from the United States. 
• 5.36% of DuckDuckGo users come  from the UK
• 5.12% of DuckDuckGo users come from Germany
• 4.48% of DuckDuckGo users come from Canada
• 2.48% of DuckDuckGo users come from France

(Similarweb)

As you can see, the US is DuckDuckGo’s biggest market by far. And other tier-1 countries in North America and Europe make up the rest of the top 5. 

DuckDuckGo website traffic statistics

Here are a few more statistics about DuckDuckGo’s website traffic according to data from Similarweb: 

• DuckDuckGo ranked #2 on Similarweb in the Search Engines (in the US) category in July 2022. This puts it behind Google but above Bing, YouTube, and other competitors.
• When compared to all websites (not just search engines), DuckDuckGo’s Global Rank is #39, and its Country Rank in the US is #23 (as of July 2022). This still puts it in the top 40 websites in the world.
• The average DuckDuckGo user visited 6.71 pages per visit in July 2022.

(Similarweb)

DuckDuckGo search engine market share statistics

Unsurprisingly, Google dominates the search engine market, with over 91% of the market share. The other 9% is split across a handful of the biggest Google competitors, including DuckDuckGo. According to Statcounter:

• DuckDuckGo has a worldwide search engine market share of just 0.71%. 
• This makes it the 6th biggest search engine globally by market share

(Statcounter)

If we break that search engine market share down by device, it becomes clear that DuckDuckGo is underperforming on mobile. It has:

• 0.99% desktop market share
• 1.07% tablet market share
• 0.56% mobile market share

(Statcounter)

One possible reason for the poor market share of DuckDuckGo in the US mobile search market is that many Android smartphone users aren’t aware of how to change their default search engine from Google. 

To test that hypothesis, DuckDuckGo conducted a study, in which they presented mobile users with a search engine preference menu, from which they could choose their default search engine.

The study found that this increased DuckDuckGo’s mobile market share, as well as the market share of other Google competitors, significantly.

• DuckDuckGo’s US mobile market share increased by 651% with a 4-choice preference menu
• In the UK, DuckDuckGo increased its mobile market share by 1180% with a 4-choice preference menu
• In Australia, DuckDuckGo increased its mobile market share by 784% with a 4-choice preference menu

(Spread Privacy¹)

DuckDuckGo search engine market share by region

While DuckDuckGo’s market share globally stands at around 0.71%, it differs dramatically across different countries and continents. Here’s a breakdown of the search engine’s market share by region.

• DuckDuckGo has a 2.11% market share in North America, which makes it the fourth biggest search engine in the region.
• DuckDuckGo has a 0.64% market share in Europe, which makes it the fifth biggest search engine in the region.
• DuckDuckGo has a 0.75% market share in Oceania, which makes it the third biggest search engine in the region (joint with Yahoo!).
• DuckDuckGo has a 0.11% market share in Africa, which makes it the sixth most popular search engine in the region.
• DuckDuckGo has a 0.12% market share in South America, which makes it the fourth most popular search engine in the region.
• DuckDuckGo doesn’t even rank in the top 6 search engines by market share in Asia. This is likely largely due to the fact that DuckDuckGo is blocked in China.

(Statcounter)

DuckDuckGo app & extensions statistics

Aside from its website search engine, DuckDuckGo also offers several apps and extensions for iOS, Android, and Chrome browsers. Here are some statistics about these DuckDuckGo apps:

• The DuckDuckGo Chrome extension (DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials) has over 5 million installations

(Google Chrome)

• DuckDuckGo has 10m+ downloads on Google Play

(Google Play Store)

• The number of downloads DuckDuckGo has isn’t listed on the Apple App Store, but given that it has over 1.4 million ratings, we’d estimate it’s in a similar ballpark to Google Play (~10m).

(Apple App Store)

The above figures represent the minimum number of app/extension downloads according to data from the app stores and Google Chrome, but the real total number of downloads is likely much higher. In fact, according to DuckDuckGo themselves:

• DuckDuckGo has 6 million monthly downloads on desktop and mobile (DuckDuckGo²)
• DuckDuckGo apps were downloaded over 50 million times from Jun 2020 to Jun 2021 alone, and…
• It was the most downloaded browser on Android in the first quarter of 2021

(Spread Privacy²)

DuckDuckGo revenue

DuckDuckGo doesn’t track its users or serve up targeted ads, but it still makes money, mainly through advertising and affiliate marketing. According to statistics:

• The company has been profitable since 2014
• DuckDuckGo earns revenues of over $100 million per year. 

While $100 million might seem like a lot, it’s still only a tiny fraction of Google’s advertising revenues, which reached over $200 billion in 2021.

(Spread Privacy²)

Benefits of DuckDuckGo

Before we wrap up, let’s look briefly at some statistics that highlight some of the benefits of DuckDuckGo and why so many people use it:

• Almost 70% of internet users in the US would like to see stronger privacy laws that ensured “the ability to easily opt-out of online tracking”. 
• Over 60% would strongly favor Congress passing a national privacy law to protect user data from corporate misuse (and a further 18.8% would somewhat favor it).
• Less than 7% would oppose such a law.

(Spread Privacy³)

• 81% of people in the US think data collection by companies comes with more risks than benefits.

(Pew Research)

• Almost 35% of surveyed people in the US said they’d be motivated to use an alternate search engine if there was an option that didn’t collect any personal data from their online activities.

(Spread Privacy¹)

Stats like these show that internet users don’t like to be tracked or have their data collected by corporations, which is one of the main reasons many switch to DuckDuckGo.

Sources

Conclusion

That concludes our roundup of the latest DuckDuckGo statistics! We hope you found them useful.

The key takeaway is that the DuckDuckGo search engine continues to be one of the leading Google competitors. 

It’s grown its search traffic and user base dramatically over the last decade. And while the recent privacy blunder seemed to cause a temporary drop in search traffic, it looks like that may now be stabilizing as traffic is on the rise once again.

The main problem DuckDuckGo may have is its very low revenue figures in comparison to Google, as its lack of targeted ads means advertising revenues aren’t as high as they could be.

Curious how DuckDuckGo stacks up to Bing – one of its biggest competitors? Make sure you check out our roundups of Microsoft Bing statistics and Google Search Statistics.

And while you’re here, you might also want to take a look at these SEO statistics and trends.