DuckDuckGo's free AI chat now rivals ChatGPT - no account required. Published Aug 24, 2026, 11:35 AM EDT Hamed holds a B.A. in English Literature, graduating cum laude. He loves music, tech gadgets, and exploring the latest in the world of LLMs. He also enjoys tinkering with creative software such as Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Photoshop. A lifelong musician, Hamed plays multiple instruments, including guitar, bass, and oud. He is equally fascinated by smart-home technology and can happily spend hours geeking out over connected lights, speakers, sensors, and automations that make everyday life a little more interesting. When he isn't covering the latest tech news, he explores more creative topics on his Medium blog, works on his music, or clears his head by riding his motorcycle. Summary. * Duck.ai now offers GPT-5.6 Luna as its default free model, with no account or login required. * DuckDuckGo anonymizes prompts and lets users switch between models including Claude Haiku 4.5, Mistral Small 4, and Gemma 4. * Duck.ai offers greater model variety than privacy-focused rivals, although Lumo or Confer may be safer for highly sensitive conversations. Using a big-name AI model normally means creating another account and trusting its developer with whatever you type. Duck.ai has offered a convenient way around that for a while, but its older free models made privacy come with a fairly noticeable performance compromise. Thankfully, that compromise is now easier to accept. DuckDuckGo has added OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Luna to Duck.ai and made it the default LLM for free users, giving you access to one of OpenAI's latest models without having to create an account or sign in. Duck.ai now offers several major AI models anonymously. GPT-5.6 Luna is the new default for free chats, but there's more. DuckDuckGo hasn't formally announced the change, but opening the official Duck.ai model selector now presents GPT-5.6 Luna as the recommended option for everyday use. The free selection also includes Claude Haiku 4.5, Mistral Small 4, GPT-5.4 mini, gpt-oss-120b, and Gemma-4-31B. OpenAI's GPT-5.6 has different models, and Luna is the smallest and most cost-efficient member of that family. Therefore, it shouldn't be confused with the more powerful Sol model that went shoulder to shoulder with Fable 5 in its test. DuckDuckGo also hasn't disclosed how much reasoning time Luna receives, so I wouldn't assume it matches the deeper reasoning configurations available elsewhere. Still, it should be more than capable enough for everyday questions and lightweight research. The important part is how Duck.ai handles your prompts. As MakeUseOf found when using DuckDuckGo's Windows browser, DuckDuckGo acts as an intermediary between you and the AI provider. It removes identifying metadata such as your IP address, making requests appear to come from DuckDuckGo instead of you. You don't need an account, DuckDuckGo doesn't store your chats on its servers by default, and its agreements prohibit providers from training their LLMS on your conversations. (I would like to believe that Johnny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077 would also use DuckDuckGo for everyday searches and inquieries.) In some cases, that gives Duck.ai a considerable advantage over visiting ChatGPT or Claude directly. More importantly, it lets you switch between models inside the same conversation. If Luna struggles with a writing prompt, for example, you can hand the conversation to Claude Haiku without copying everything into another chatbot. Can Duck.ai beat the competition? For highly sensitive conversations, Proton's Lumo is arguably the best option out there, which can also be considered as Duck.ai'ssest competitor. It offers guest access, keeps no logs, and uses zero-access encryption for saved chats (which does require a free Proton account). The downside is that Lumo relies on open-source models hosted by Proton. It doesn't let you jump between OpenAI and Anthropic models. Therefore, if a balance of privacy and answer quality is what you're looking for, Duck.ai can be a more versatile option. Confer is another compelling alternative. It protects conversations with end-to-end encryption and confidential computing. It also supports useful features such as web search, image generation, and memory. But again, it is designed around its own models rather than a menu of recognizable third-party LLMs. It's also recommended for people who don't want to deal with ads in ChatGPT. Duck.ai is a compelling private AI sampler, but it isn't a vault. Duck.ai now occupies an appealing middle ground: it is anonymous enough for ordinary questions, requires no account, and offers more model choice than its privacy-focused rivals. However, anonymity doesn't erase personal details that you include inside a prompt. For confidential documents or genuinely sensitive conversations, Lumo's encryption or a completely local model remains safer. For everything else, getting Luna and Claude in the same private interface is tough to beat.

DuckDuckGo quietly adds GPT-5.6 Luna and makes it the default option on the browser. The latest version of DuckDuckGo has made OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Luna model the standard one in Duck.ai. It's the fastest tier that the company offers and is also the most affordable. Heading over to the Duck.ai chat box, you'll find that GPT-5.6 Luna is now selected by default. For those unaware, Duck.ai is a privacy-focused chat platform that the company offers for free (base models), and you don't even have to log in to use it. It also provides multimodal access and strictly emphasizes that no metadata is collected. If you want to use better models such as Claude Sonnet or Opus, you'll need to pay for the subscription. Under the options for AI models in the browsers, you'll also find Gemma 4, which is in beta. It also includes GPT-5.4 mini, but you'll run into rate limits faster if you use that. Claude Haiku 4.5 is also offered for free, but that one doesn't have as many free-use tokens as GPT-5.6 Luna either. DuckDuckGo describes the default Luna model as the best one for everyday use. GPT-5.6 Sol is unavailable at the time of writing in the given list of options. Since DuckDuckGo hasn't officially announced this change, people were taken aback and were quick to point this out on social media. It's a silent update, and the model appeared out of nowhere a few days ago. However, it's worth noting that PiunikaWeb don't know the exact thinking level the company has selected, so it may not suit complex tasks well. In other DuckDuckGo news, a recent update for the iOS app has added more shortcut options to the address bar and toolbar. More on that here. PiunikaWeb stand out from the tech-media crowd because PiunikaWeb break news stories; PiunikaWeb mainly bring you stuff that you won't find anywhere in the mainstream tech media. Its stories have been picked up by some of the world's most popular websites and media outlets - more info is available here. I have been a consumer technology enthusiast for over 5 years. Thanks to my experience in software beta testing and product reviews, I've understood and learnt a lot about what bugs and issues bother people, and I spend time trying to simplify their solutions. I cover smartphones, software, social media, apps, AI, and most consumer tech gadgets. Actively pursuing a Computer Science bachelor's degree. I'm mostly active on Twitter/X (@TechWhirlUlt), drop a DM or tag me if you want to share info or connect!