DuckDuckGo Instant Answers Scraper

Requests DuckDuckGo's ZeroClick API for instant-answer data. It is designed for answer modules such as abstracts, definitions, calculations, and related topics; it is not a general web-results scraper.

Input

Field	Description	Default
query	Required search phrase.	—
maxResults	Maximum answer records; allowed range is 1–100.	10
region	DuckDuckGo region/language code, such as us-en or de-de.	us-en
proxyConfiguration	Optional Apify Proxy configuration.	—

Example:

{
  "query": "population of France",
  "maxResults": 10,
  "region": "us-en"
}

Dataset

Rows are emitted only for answer types returned by the endpoint. Available fields include type, resultType, answerType, heading, title, description, abstractText, abstractSource, abstractUrl, answer, definition, definitionSource, definitionUrl, image, imageHeight, imageWidth, imageIsLogo, infobox, relatedTopics, entity, group, redirect, text, url, sourceUrl, sourceDomain, position, query, searchQuery, region, country, language, apiUrl, searchUrl, and scrapedAt. Optional values are omitted when the response does not contain them. The schema also declares results; the current record normalizer does not populate that property.

The API may return no instant answer for a query, in which case the dataset can be empty. The Actor does not fall back to ordinary search results.

Runtime and validation

Firefox and Playwright are pinned together; the Docker build checks that the installed package can locate the image's browser. Run npm ci and npm test for the local regression suite.

Nested related-topic groups are flattened with their group names, and duplicate related URLs are removed before the result limit. Full source answer text is retained; absent or malformed optional fields are omitted. The OUTPUT record distinguishes a valid empty answer response from saved answers and reports the number of records acknowledged by the dataset write. It is not a dataset-metadata count.

Explicitly disabling Apify Proxy uses a direct connection. If a proxy is requested but cannot be configured, the Actor fails rather than silently switching routes. HTTP denials and invalid response bodies fail without an alternate endpoint or verification workaround.

The 2026-10-01 repair was checked using local fixtures only. The repository's recorded access restriction for the Instant Answers endpoint remains unresolved; these tests do not establish live service recovery.

Network route

The prefilled input uses direct requests to DuckDuckGo’s public JSON API. A proxy is optional and is used only when explicitly configured. If a requested proxy fails, the Actor fails without silently changing the route; proxy transport failure diagnostics omit request internals and credentials.