Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing DuckDuckGo vs Instapaper, the Slant community recommends Instapaper for most people. In the question“What are the most useful Android phone apps?” Instapaper is ranked 17th while DuckDuckGo is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose Instapaper is:
Allows leaving notes attached to articles and highlighting certain part of the text. Free version of the app is limited to 5 highlights a month.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Very protective of user privacy
DuckDuckGo does not collect or share any personal information. Their privacy page has a great rundown on why privacy is important. The most important repercussion of this is that DDG doesn't use the data collected to tailor results, avoiding exposure to the "Filter Bubble".
Pro Infinite scroll of search results
DuckDuckGo results page is an infinite scrolling page, so you don't need to be clicking through pages.
Pro Ads are non-obstructive and don't track you
The ads are clearly labelled as ads and are non-obstructive. The ads are based on the searched keywords and there's no tracking involved on their visibility. You just need to remember that the site the ad links to might track you.
Pro Can disable advertisements
The search engine allows freely disabling ads.
Pro Allows searching from specific sites using bangs
Bangs are commands that allow searching via a different website's local search engine, using keywords or abbreviations with an exclamation mark (!). For example searching "world war ii !wiki" will automatically redirect to Wikipedia.org and show results for the query "world war ii" there, instead of DuckDuckGo, using Wikipedia's search engine.
The more common sites have shortened alternatives for these commands. Such as !g for Google, !i for images and !yt Youtube.
The whole list of bangs can be found by typing "!bang" in DuckDuckGo.
Pro Has a wide spectrum of instant answers
For select queries DDG pops up a box that supplies the exact answer. For example, searching "stopwatch" will pop up a stopwatch, asking for "words like..." will show a list of related words, typing "password" will generate a password, etc.
Pro Many customization options for appearance
DDG allows customizing almost any aspect of the search engine's appearance including fonts, page width, alignment, header behavior, site icons, etc and has a selection of premade themes available as well.
Pro Lets you watch YouTube videos from the site
Duckduckgo lets you watch videos right from their site, so you can have more privacy than watching on youtube.com.
Pro Has a .onion site
Only accessible from Tor.
Pro Sometimes results are better than Google
Sometimes the search results are better. Most of the times, they're at least as good as.
Pro Has many fun features
For example, if you search "Color Picker" , you see a color picker.
Pro Can function without JavaScript
Of course, it's nicer when enabled, but it's not required. Some browsers are too limited (mobile, terminal) or turn it off for security reasons (tor, etc.), and DDG still works.
Pro Good for Linux users
DuckDuckGo has an API with some websites. With the help of this API, if you search for a fix of a problem in Linux, you can easily find an answer to the problem. For example, if you search for "How to update linux", you will get a message like this:
How to install updates via command line
Try this:
sudo apt-get update # Fetches the list of available updates
sudo apt-get upgrade # Strictly upgrades the current packages
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade # Installs updates (new ones)
--SirCharlo
Pro No filter bubble
DuckDuckGo does not filter your search’s with the data that they have. You get to see everything the Internet has to offer in a safe, private way.
Pro It's mainstream
This is the biggest private search engine there is
Pro Lets you go to other sites
You can go to the Wikipedia page for pigs by doing !w pig.
Pro Annotation tools
Allows leaving notes attached to articles and highlighting certain part of the text. Free version of the app is limited to 5 highlights a month.
Pro Excellent typography choices
Instapaper allows you to choose from 14 different fonts, some of which have been designed specifically for the application. You can manually adjust spacing between lines, padding around text and font size to fit your preferences.
Pro Allows listening to articles
Instapaper comes with a build in text-to-speech feature that will read out loud articles. Premium version of the app allows creating playlists.
Pro Articles can be emailed to Instapaper
You can add articles to Instapaper by sending them to a unique email address associated with your account.
Pro Pagination
Allows for pagination, not just scrolling.
Pro Awesome offline mode
Pro Can look up words in a dictionary and Wikipedia
Pro Can be set to switch to dark mode based on time of day
Instapaper includes a dark theme and allows switching to it after a set period in time or gradually over the course of the day.
Pro Rarely seen organization options
In addition to allowing you to sort articles by when you saved them, you can also order articles by length or read progress and popularity.
Pro Free archiving of deleted webpages
In Pocket, this is a paid function - but Instapaper provides this for free! If a webpage is deleted, it remains in your Instapaper and they even archive pictures of the articles.
Pro Can playback inline video
Instapaper will play videos from YouTube, Vimeo and other sources that are embedded in articles, but you have to be online for playback to work.
Pro Has a font designed for readers with Dyslexia
Instapaper includes Dyslexie a font that helps people with reading problems understand the text better.
Pro Includes optional social features
If you set your Instapaper profile to be public, your friends will be able to see articles you've liked.
Cons
Con No date information in search results
In search results, there are no dates when the pages were published, which doesn't allow you to immediately know if the page is outdated.
Con Downranks misinformation results
Company announced that they are downranking misinformation results about the war by Russia media, after Russian's invasion of Ukraine.
Con Irrelevant search results
They store no information about you (theoretically a pro) but this results in absolutely awful search results, and having to modify your search terms 4-5 times to get what you are looking for.
Con Owner would compromise his service/customer privacy
In a question to Weinberg, “if you were served an NSL or were commanded to compromise your service/customer privacy in any way, would you and could you just pull the plug like Lavabit did or would you run into opposition from shareholders/investors that would prevent you from doing so?” Gabriel Weinberg said: “No one is preventing me from doing that.”
Con Still not better than Google
Results are quite often not as good. They just lack resources to do it, for now.
Con Based in US, so they cannot guarantee there is no backdoor
Con DuckDuckGo has no 3rd party certifications
Con Activism censorship
They started to block results based on activism.
Con Search using language other than English is not so great
Korean would never use it.
Con Referrers
A referrer is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referrer, the new webpage can see where the request originated.” Basically it tells a website where you came from. DDG does give this out.
Con Bing = DuckDuckGo
Duckduckgo depends on Bing for the query.
Con Search results are often unrelated and limited
Common conversions do not work, i.e. searching for 15F to C does not give you the conversion but just a bunch of conversion websites. Very frustrating. It's a simple thing but makes a huge difference to the browsing/searching experience. Also location based only works for the country you're in. Searching for, say, McDonalds only gives country results for McDonalds and no local results such as where a local restaurant may be. Not very helpful.
Con DuckDuckGo has many 'Owners'
DuckDuckGo is owned by Gabriel Weinberg who is is the founder, current CEO and controlling shareholder. Investors/shareholders include Union Square Ventures and several others. DuckDuckGo generates its income from advertising (Bing Ads) and collects affiliate revenue (Amazon, eBay).
Con Needs a clearer vision of the future
What's duck's goal or quest?
Con Shows too few images
When searching for images only, it shows too few of them and only a handful are related to the search terms.
Con Hosted on Amazon servers (EC2)
Con Bangs do not protect user privacy and can be misleading
Using these bangs will instantly connect you to the service you requested. For example typing “!g white cat with green eyes” and hitting return, drops you off on the Google website to display your results (thus logging your IP, search term and browser info immediately). It does not get you Google results inside DuckDuckGo. It is reasonable for DDG users to assume and expect a private search engine warns if there is a risk to that privacy being lost, like it does with Youtube videos but in the case of Bangs this does not happen.
Con Saving settings in Duckduckgo's Cloud still needs improvement
Cloud save and the ability to pull up your settings on any device is a nice idea but the implementation needs work.
Con Doesn't do personalized searches
Since they don't track you the results are not tailored to your interests.
Con Form over function (overall search experience is poor)
It's nice to adjust the settings and all but after a couple of days you will want to go back to a more functional search engine.
Sure DDG looks shiny and !bangs are great but many wouldn't consider it as a viable alternative. Better results for search queries is more important than fancy looking CSS.
Con Became a paid service again
Most functions, like search, became premium.
Con Basic search not free
Basic search for link title or website too is part of the premium.
Con Embedded images and videos are sometimes ignored
Instapaper sometimes saves articles without images or videos.
Con Only supports English
It only supports English, and not Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages.
Con Tags not implemented
Con Search functions return random articles
The search function is very slow and does not provide accurate results. The user can not filter or reorder the search results, or search the archive or annotated articles.
