Short version: yes, mostly. DuckDuckGo is genuinely more private than searching on Google, and it does not build a profile of you. But "private" is not a single yes or no, so here is the honest, full picture.
What DuckDuckGo gets right
It does not ask for an account, it does not store a search history tied to you, and it does not build a behavioral profile to target ads. The ads it does show are matched to your current query, not to a history of everything you have ever looked for. For most people, switching from Google to DuckDuckGo is a real and meaningful privacy upgrade.
Where the nuance lives
DuckDuckGo's web results lean heavily on Bing's index, so part of the request path involves Microsoft's infrastructure. The results page also keeps growing: instant answers, modules, and increasingly AI-generated summaries. None of that breaks the privacy promise, but it is worth knowing that "private" and "minimal" are not the same thing.
If you want private and bare
Some people want privacy and also want the page to get out of the way. That is the gap Bare fills. Like DuckDuckGo, it keeps no account, no history, and no behavioral profile. Unlike most engines, it shows a list of links and a single quick fact when it is confident, with no AI summary layered on top.
Your query reaches the index through our server, so the index sees our network rather than your address, and no location signal goes with it. Nothing about the search is stored once the page loads.
So, is it enough?
For the vast majority of people, DuckDuckGo is plenty private and an easy switch. If you also want a quieter, lighter page that forgets you instantly, Bare is worth a try. Both beat searching on Google by a wide margin, and that is the comparison that actually counts.