DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro Review - PCMag
If you use a major search engine on a major browser, you can be sure that your activity is less than private and that a major corporation is profiting from it. Switching to a private browser like DuckDuckGo, with its built-in private search engine, is a big boost for your privacy. While DuckDuckGo is free, the paid DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro further enhances your privacy with personal data removal, identity theft remediation, and a VPN. Unfortunately, none of these paid tools are particularly good. DuckDuckGo is a good browser, but you're better off looking elsewhere for the rest of your privacy needs.
How Much Does DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro Cost?
DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year. Upgrading from the free private browser gets you a VPN, identity theft remediation, and personal information removal.
Ghostery Privacy Suite is similar to DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro in many ways, though it doesn't offer a built-in VPN. It has its own private browser and private search engine. It blocks ads, trackers, and browser fingerprinters. And, like DuckDuckGo, it automates responding to those pesky cookie privacy prompts. Best of all, it's free, though you're encouraged to contribute in some way, perhaps by reviewing its code, finding bugs, or paying $47.88 per year, roughly half the price of DuckDuckGo.
IronVest takes a quite different approach to privacy. It focuses on the ability to shop and communicate online while masking your email address, phone number, and credit card. It has a built-in password manager, and, like DuckDuckGo, it blocks all kinds of trackers. All that comes at a price of $39 per year.
Similar Products
IronVest
Optery
Ghostery Privacy Suite
Proton VPN
NordVPN
Windscribe VPN
It's Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online The best identity theft protection services cost quite a bit more than DuckDuckGo, but they do vastly more. Subscriptions for Norton 360 with LifeLock start at $149.99 per year, and Bitdefender Ultimate Security runs $179.99 and up. However, there's just no comparison between these and DuckDuckGo. Both offer a full security suite for multiple devices, VPN protection, and comprehensive monitoring to detect and prevent identity theft. The latter distinction is important, because as we'll discuss below, DuckDuckGo only promises help after your identity is stolen.
Looking at dedicated personal data removal services, Optery charges $99.99 per year and Privacy Bee goes for $197 per year. Those prices get you fully automated personal data removal for 305 sites and 440 sites, respectively; DuckDuckGo handles only 55 sites at present. You can use both Optery and Privacy Bee for free if you're willing to handle the opt-out process manually.
Getting Started With DuckDuckGo
The first step to using DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro involves installing DuckDuckGo, a free private browser and search engine. The DuckDuckGo search engine uses its own crawler to get you all the results you're looking for, but without collecting any personal information. You can search images, videos, news, maps, and more. It lacks some bells and whistles such as the extensive info panels found in Bing and Google, but surely your privacy is worth more.
You can use the DuckDuckGo browser on macOS or Windows or the app for Android or iOS. Secure search is built in, and the browser refrains from gathering your personal information. Features include automatic cookie consent management, support for the emerging Global Privacy Control initiative, and a flame button that quickly "burns up" all your open tabs.
As noted, Ghostery also handles those obtrusive cookie-choice pop-ups for you and blocks ads, trackers, and fingerprinters. Avast AntiTrack and Norton AntiTrack also block ads, trackers, and fingerprinters. Many security suites include a browser extension with a similar purpose.
When you first launch the DuckDuckGo browser, it walks you through an interactive onboarding tour. For example, it has you click to see an example of a page with and without tracker blocking. The tour also helps you import favorites from your own browser and make DuckDuckGo the new default.
You enable Privacy Pro by selecting it from the browser's menu and either purchasing a subscription or adding it to an existing subscription. The VPN is installed the first time you invoke it, and you manage all VPN settings from within the browser's menu.
VPN protection extends to all your connected devices, not just this browser. You won't be restricted to only using the DuckDuckGo browser to surf the web in a VPN-protected state, but all settings can only be accessed via the browser configuration.
DuckDuckGo Personal Information Removal Do
While your personal information may get exposed in a data breach, stolen by malware, or traded on the dark web, law-breaking and evil intent aren't required for you to lose control of your data. Data brokers scrape publicly available information on the web to aggregate a profile that represents you. They then sell those profiles to whoever is buying, from advertisers to identity thieves. Since they're nominally legitimate, though, they have to take down your profile if you ask them to. But how do you know who to ask?
DuckDuckGo's Personal Information Removal service scans popular data brokers, and people search sites for your details. When it finds them, it automatically invokes the opt-out process. In our testing, it was able to remove our information from 42 websites out of the 55 it tracks. As noted, dedicated personal data removal services like Optery and Privacy Bee handle vastly more sites.
When we asked our DuckDuckGo contacts about this limited coverage, they leaned into the anonymity angle. They said that DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro is a superior personal information removal product because rather than you sending your personal information—read: things like your first and last name and email address—to a company for them to store on their servers when they perform your records search, that information is stored locally on your device instead.
Given that the data in question is publicly available, we don't see the value in local storage. On the spectrum of personal information that we should be paying extra out of pocket to protect, something that's easy to look up doesn't feel like it should be priority number one.
In any case, most companies encrypt their backend servers with many of the same security tools consumer devices use to protect data—if not even stronger ones. We'd be happier if the service expanded its coverage to a larger number of data-grabbing sites.
Identity Theft Remediation, Not Monitoring
Whether through a data broker, a data breach, or deliberate theft, your personal information could wind up in the hands of an identity thief. The process usually starts small, perhaps making a purchase on your credit card or opening an account in your name. But once the thief gets traction, your problems snowball. You could wind up losing your bank account or even your house. Identity theft can ruin your life.
DuckDuckGo's identity theft remediation service aims to help you recover from identity theft after the fact. Through a partner service called Iris, DuckDuckGo offers a plan that can reimburse you for up to $1,000,000, which is on par with similar remediation services. There's no way for us to benchmark getting our identity stolen to test this side of the product, so we'll be taking DuckDuckGo at their word on its effectiveness in the event of ID theft.
Now, which would you prefer, having a helper reconstruct your life after a devastating identity attack or never experiencing that attack in the first place? Right. Serious identity theft services like LifeLock put immense effort into tracking down those tiny first signs that your data has been compromised. From checking the dark web for your data to watching your accounts for anomalous transactions, they aim to provide a warning so you can prevent identity theft, not just recover after the disaster. We don't recommend remediation-only services for identity theft protection.
DuckDuckGo VPN
With so much focus on—and money in—VPNs, it's little surprise to see a privacy industry stalwart like DuckDuckGo finally get in on the game with DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro. Unfortunately, its offering is so sparse that it's seriously expensive for what it offers, as we'll explain.
VPN Protocols
There are several ways to create and protect a VPN connection. We like WireGuard or OpenVPN for speed and security. DuckDuckGo uses WireGuard. The company told us it surveyed its users and found they preferred the "simplicity of one protocol" over several different options.
We prefer services that let you choose from multiple protocols, as each has tasks it is better or worse at, depending on the application. Some providers like ExpressVPN even offer their own proprietary encryption protocols—Lightway, in that company's specific case—which have their own advantages, including in-house tech and greater control over certain aspects your connection.
Servers and Server Locations
When discussing server locations and counts, we often use triple digits, if not quadruple. In the case of DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro, however, we're down to double and even single digits. Your subscription gives you access to just seven countries and 15 server locations. For comparison, we've calculated that the average VPN across nearly 40 products reviewed has around 53 locations and offers nearly 2,000 servers to choose from. TunnelBear VPN offers 5,000 servers in 45 countries.
As you can see, there is almost no comparison to be made here. DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro has a long way to go before it offers VPN service globally at the same capacity and distribution as the competition.
Privacy
You'd be hard-pressed to find another company in the privacy industry as widely revered and respected as DuckDuckGo. While Google and Microsoft are not historically known for their willingness to let minor annoyances like "morals" or "the greater good" get in the way of their march of progress, DuckDuckGo has stayed true to its mission, "to make online privacy simple and accessible for all."
DuckDuckGo currently says it doesn't keep any logs of its users' data, though as of this writing, the company has not released third-party audits of its products or practices. This is an odd choice for a company so devoted to the personal privacy of its customers. We've been told that the audit is coming, but we are perplexed as to why the company couldn't simply wait until that piece was in place before launching.
Hands On With DuckDuckGo VPN
We tested DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro's VPN functionality via the DuckDuckGo browser on a 2023 HP Envy x360 laptop running Windows 10.
To get started, download the app on your preferred platform, open the Settings menu within the browser app, and tap the toggle switch to activate the VPN. Your device will ask for your approval to create VPN configurations. Once you give the OK, the VPN turns on and starts routing all your traffic through a server in one of several US cities or the following countries: Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom.
DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro's VPN capabilities are new, but some platforms it's available on already offer features found in established VPN products, like split tunneling. You can enable the feature by visiting the Excluded Apps section of the VPN settings menu on Android and ChromeOS and choosing apps to exclude from VPN routing. Every platform's VPN includes the ability to exclude local network traffic, and the always-on VPN feature is available for Android and ChromeOS users.
We tested the connection on each platform using DNSLeakTest.com while routing traffic through DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro VPN servers in Alcobendas, Spain; Atlanta, GA; Rotterdam, Netherlands; and London, UK. DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro did not reveal our IP address throughout the testing period.
To further test the VPN section of the browser app, we watched videos on YouTube and live streams on Twitch.tv. We didn't have trouble loading or watching YouTube videos while connected to any of the DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro VPN servers on each platform. The Twitch streams are a different story. We experienced delays between 6 and 10 seconds when loading Twitch.tv streams using Android, iOS, and macOS devices while connected to servers in Spain, Canada, and the United Kingdom. We recently tested HMA and HotSpot Shield VPN's overseas servers, and Twitch.tv streams loaded instantly each time on every platform.
The ChromeOS video testing results differed because we could only choose to connect to the nearest VPN within that app. We did not see an option to choose overseas VPN server locations. Since we were able to connect to a VPN close to our location, the Twitch.tv stream loaded a lot faster while using the app for Chromebook. Once the live-streaming video loaded, the connection remained steady and free of interruptions on every platform.
Can You Use DuckDuckGo VPN for Netflix?
Netflix and other streaming platforms offer specific content to specific parts of the world. With a VPN, you can jump those invisible borders to see how the other half lives or to continue watching your shows while traveling. Netflix is wise to this scheme, however, and actively works to block users who connect via VPN.
We were surprised to find that Netflix content was blocked when we tried to connect to Netflix from the Canadian DuckDuckGo VPN server. In all our recent tests, we were able to access some form of the Netflix library in each of the 25 other VPNs we've tested within the past year.
In our Canada test, DuckDuckGo VPN returned us to the "Netflix isn't available in your country" screen, one we haven't seen in a long time. Australia and Japan were not tested, as DuckDuckGo does not offer servers in those regions.
How Fast Is DuckDuckGo VPN?
No matter the VPN you choose, the odds are that it will have some impact on your web browsing experience—generally, an increase in latency and a dip in upload and download speeds. To get a sense of that impact and to compare VPN services, we run a series of tests using the Ookla Speedtest tool. (Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com's parent company. For more, see the ethics policy in our Editorial Mission Statement.)
In our tests, we found that DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro increased latency by just over 133.98%, which isn't great but could have been compounded by the issue of limited server selection (our closest option was in New Jersey). It also decreased download speeds by 33.55% and upload speeds by just 3.03%. While the latency score is well below the median average, the upload results are actually the fastest we've tested, perhaps because not many people are using the service yet. The overall results aren't spectacular, but they put DuckDuckGo VPN's performance roughly in the middle of the pack.
In the chart below, you can see how DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro compares with the top ten performers among the more than 30 services we tested. Note that your experience with a VPN will likely differ greatly from ours.
NordVPN is the fastest service we've yet tested, with the least impact on upload and download results. That said, we caution strongly against choosing a VPN on speed alone. Overall value, a commitment to customer privacy, and the technology used by the service are all far more important.
Verdict: Not Nearly Up to Pro Level
DuckDuckGo has earned immense goodwill for its free private search engine and browser. However, DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro is far from free and doesn't merit its price. Other services offer broader personal information removal, thorough identity theft monitoring, and vastly superior VPN coverage. While its set of privacy features only partially overlaps DuckDuckGo, our Editors' Choice winner for privacy is IronVest, which masks personal information, foils trackers, manages passwords, and more. In the realm of dedicated personal data removal services, Optery and Privacy Bee share the Editors' Choice honor. And there are many better VPNs out there, with Proton, Nord, and Windscribe earning our highest recommendation.
DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro fails to build upon the popular private browser with paltry personal data removal, limited identity theft remediation, and a VPN that doesn't make the grade.
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