AI crawler index

What is DuckAssistBot?

DuckAssistBot is DuckDuckGo's crawler for AI search. Crawls pages in real time for DuckDuckGo's AI-assisted answers, which cite their sources.

At a glance

Operator	DuckDuckGo
Purpose	AI search
User agent	`DuckAssistBot/1.2; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.html)`
Obeys robots.txt	Yes, according to the operator
Published IP ranges	https://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.json
How to verify it	Requests come from the IP addresses DuckDuckGo publishes.
Official documentation	https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/duckassistbot

Should you block DuckAssistBot?

It builds the index an AI search engine cites from. Blocking it can remove your pages from that engine's answers and links, so if you want to be cited there, allow it.

DuckDuckGo says it is not used to train AI models, a robots.txt block takes effect within 72 hours, and opting out does not affect organic DuckDuckGo rankings.

How to block or allow DuckAssistBot in robots.txt

Block it everywhere:

User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Disallow: /

Allow it everywhere:

User-agent: DuckAssistBot
Allow: /

Rules are matched by the token on the User-agent line. Test the result with the robots.txt tester before you publish it.

How to verify that a visit is really DuckAssistBot

Anyone can write DuckAssistBot in a user agent, so the user agent alone proves nothing. Take the IP address of the request from your server logs and check it.

DuckDuckGo publishes its IP ranges as JSON. This command downloads the list and prints True if the IP is in it. Replace 203.0.113.7 with the IP from your logs; Python 3 comes with macOS and most Linux systems.

curl -s https://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.json \
  | python3 -c 'import sys, json, ipaddress as ip
a = ip.ip_address(sys.argv[1])
ranges = json.load(sys.stdin)["prefixes"]
print(any(a in ip.ip_network(r.get("ipv4Prefix") or r.get("ipv6Prefix")) for r in ranges))' 203.0.113.7

Other DuckDuckGo crawlers

DuckDuckBot: Search engine

Check your own site

The AI crawler checker tells you which AI crawlers your robots.txt lets in, and the log file analyzer shows how often each one actually visits. For the bigger picture, see what AI crawlers are and the full AI crawler index.

What our data says about DuckAssistBot

Figures we measured on real AI answers and websites. Each one links to its study, with the method, the sample and the date.

6.8%

6.8% of the websites AI cites most in Spain block DuckAssistBot from crawling their site, and 5.2% name it in a robots.txt group of its own.

Sample: 382 websites AI cites for three or more of 43 brands in Spain. Source: Mencoro (October 2026), in Which AI crawlers do the websites AI cites let in?