DDGS | Dux Distributed Global Search

A metasearch library that aggregates results from diverse web search services.

Table of Contents

• Install
• CLI version
• API Server
• MCP Server
• Engines
• DDGS class
• 1. text()
• 2. images()
• 3. videos()
• 4. news()
• 5. books()
• 6. extract()
• Disclaimer

---

Install

pip install -U ddgs       # Base install
pip install -U ddgs[api]  # API server (FastAPI)
pip install -U ddgs[mcp]  # MCP server (stdio)

CLI version

ddgs - -help

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---

API Server

-- Install

pip install -U ddgs[api]

-- CLI

ddgs api              # Start server in foreground
ddgs api -d           # Start in detached mode (background)
ddgs api -s           # Stop detached server
ddgs api --host 127.0.0.1 --port 4479  # Default port 4479
ddgs api -pr socks5h://127.0.0.1:9150  # With proxy

-- Docker compose

git clone https://github.com/deedy5/ddgs && cd ddgs
docker-compose up --build

-- Bash script

git clone https://github.com/deedy5/ddgs && cd ddgs
chmod +x start_api.sh
./start_api.sh

Endpoints

Endpoint	Method	Description
/search/text	GET, POST	Text search
/search/images	GET, POST	Image search
/search/news	GET, POST	News search
/search/videos	GET, POST	Video search
/search/books	GET, POST	Book search
/extract	GET, POST	Extract content from URL
/health	GET	Health check
/docs	GET	Swagger UI
/redoc	GET	ReDoc documentation

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---

MCP Server

• Install

pip install -U ddgs[mcp]

• CLI

ddgs mcp    # Start MCP server (stdio transport)
ddgs mcp -pr socks5h://127.0.0.1:9150  # With proxy

Available Tools

Tool	Description
search_text	Web text search
search_images	Image search
search_news	News search
search_videos	Video search
search_books	Book search
extract_content	Extract content from a URL

Client Configuration

For MCP clients like Cursor or Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ddgs": {
      "command": "ddgs",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

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---

Engines

DDGS function	Available backends
text()	bing, brave, duckduckgo, google, grokipedia, mojeek, startpage, yandex, yahoo, wikipedia
images()	bing, duckduckgo
videos()	duckduckgo
news()	bing, duckduckgo, yahoo
books()	annasarchive

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DDGS class

DDGS class is lazy-loaded.

class DDGS:
    """Dux Distributed Global Search. A metasearch library that aggregates results from diverse web search services.

    Args:
        proxy (str, optional): proxy for the HTTP client, supports http/https/socks5 protocols.
            example: "http://user:pass@example.com:3128". Defaults to None.
        timeout (int, optional): Timeout value for the HTTP client. Defaults to 5.
        verify: (bool | str):  True to verify, False to skip, or a str path to a PEM file. Defaults to True.
    """

Here is an example of initializing the DDGS class.

from ddgs import DDGS

results = DDGS().text("python programming", max_results=5)
print(results)

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1. text()

def text(
    query: str,
    region: str = "us-en",
    safesearch: str = "moderate",
    timelimit: str | None = None,
    max_results: int | None = 10,
    page: int = 1,
    backend: str = "auto",
) -> list[dict[str, str]]:
    """DDGS text metasearch.

    Args:
        query: text search query.
        region: us-en, uk-en, ru-ru, etc. Defaults to us-en.
        safesearch: on, moderate, off. Defaults to "moderate".
        timelimit: d, w, m, y. Defaults to None.
        max_results: maximum number of results. Defaults to 10.
        page: page of results. Defaults to 1.
        backend: A single or comma-delimited backends. Defaults to "auto".

    Returns:
        List of dictionaries with search results.
    """

Example

results = DDGS().text("live free or die", region="us-en", safesearch="off", timelimit="y", page=1, backend="auto")
# Searching for pdf files
results = DDGS().text("russia filetype:pdf", region="us-en", safesearch="off", timelimit="y", page=1, backend="auto")
print(results)
[
    {
        "title": "News, sport, celebrities and gossip | The Sun",
        "href": "https://www.thesun.co.uk/",
        "body": "Get the latest news, exclusives, sport, celebrities, showbiz, politics, business and lifestyle from The Sun",
    },
    ...,
]

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2. images()

def images(
    query: str,
    region: str = "us-en",
    safesearch: str = "moderate",
    timelimit: str | None = None,
    max_results: int | None = 10,
    page: int = 1,
    backend: str = "auto",
    size: str | None = None,
    color: str | None = None,
    type_image: str | None = None,
    layout: str | None = None,
    license_image: str | None = None,
) -> list[dict[str, str]]:
    """DDGS images metasearch.

    Args:
        query: images search query.
        region: us-en, uk-en, ru-ru, etc. Defaults to us-en.
        safesearch: on, moderate, off. Defaults to "moderate".
        timelimit: d, w, m, y. Defaults to None.
        max_results: maximum number of results. Defaults to 10.
        page: page of results. Defaults to 1.
        backend: A single or comma-delimited backends. Defaults to "auto".
        size: Small, Medium, Large, Wallpaper. Defaults to None.
        color: color, Monochrome, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue,
            Pur