DuckDuckGo Instant Answers Scraper

Extracts instant answers from DuckDuckGo's ZeroClick API — definitions, calculations, Wikipedia summaries, infoboxes, and related topics for any query.

What this Actor collects

The Actor requests DuckDuckGo's ZeroClick JSON API directly and converts responses into clean records for abstracts, direct answers, definitions, and related topics, with source links, infobox data, locale, and retrieval provenance when available.

• Uses the input limits and filters below to control the crawl.
• Stores source-backed fields defined by the 35-field dataset schema.
• Omits optional fields when the source does not expose a value instead of writing nulls or fabricated placeholders.

Use cases

• Instant-answer and entity research
• Definition and reference enrichment
• Related-topic discovery

Input

Provide input in JSON. Fields marked required must be supplied. The Default / example column shows a schema default when one exists; otherwise it shows a documented prefill or fixture value.

Field	Type	Required	Default / example	Description
query	string	Yes	"population of france"	The search query to get instant answers for.
maxResults	integer	No	10	Maximum number of instant answer results to push.
region	string	No	"us-en"	Region code (e.g. 'us-en', 'uk-en', 'de-de').
maxRequestRetries	integer	No	2	Retries for transient rate limits and server failures.
requestTimeoutSecs	integer	No	30	Maximum time in seconds for each Instant Answer API request.
proxyConfiguration	object	No	{"useApifyProxy":false}	Optional proxy settings for the API request.

Example input

{
  "query": "population of france",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  },
  "maxResults": 10,
  "region": "us-en",
  "maxRequestRetries": 2,
  "requestTimeoutSecs": 30
}

Output

The default dataset contains one item per extracted abstract, direct answer, definition, or related topic. The fields present depend on the ZeroClick result type.

Field	Type	Description
position	integer	Position
type	string	Record Type
answerType	string	Answer Type
title	string	Title
description	string	Description
abstractSource	string	Abstract Source
sourceDomain	string	Source Domain
sourceUrl	string	Source URL
query	string	Query
region	string	Region
scrapedAt	string	Scraped At
url	string	Topic or Result URL
searchQuery	string	Search Query
resultType	string	Result Type
heading	string	Heading
abstractText	string	Abstract Text

Example dataset item

This compact example is taken from local Actor storage. Long text and nested collections are shortened for documentation only.

{
  "position": 1,
  "type": "abstract",
  "answerType": "article",
  "title": "Demographics of France",
  "description": "The demography of France is monitored by the Institut national d'études démographiques and the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. As of 1 January 2026,…",
  "abstractSource": "Wikipedia",
  "sourceDomain": "en.wikipedia.org",
  "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France",
  "query": "population of france",
  "region": "us-en",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-23T16:49:20.412Z",
  "searchQuery": "population of france"
}

Related Actors

• Duck.ai Guest Answers Scraper
• DuckDuckGo Autocomplete Scraper
• DuckDuckGo Bangs Directory Scraper