# Duck.ai offers free Claude 4.5 Haiku, but GPT-5.6 requires paid plan

Digest AI · Marketing & Small Business · published 2026-10-22T05:27:00Z

Canonical: https://digestai.news/story/duck-ai-offers-free-claude-4-5-haiku-but-gpt-5-6-requires-paid-plan

## Summary

A viral social media post claimed that Duck.ai, an AI chat service by DuckDuckGo, offers GPT-5.6 and Claude models completely for free without account registration. An investigation into official documentation reveals this claim is misleading. While Duck.ai does allow users to access several AI models without creating an account, the free tier is limited to specific models such as Claude 4.5 Haiku, GPT-5.4 mini, and Mistral Small 4. 

Higher-performance models, including GPT-5.6 Terra and Sol, as well as Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.8, require a paid subscription. The service also supports image generation, a feature not confirmed by some AI assistants during the initial investigation. Regarding privacy, Duck.ai stores chat history locally on the user's device by default. Users can enable an optional encrypted sync feature, but DuckDuckGo states it removes personally identifiable information before sending queries to model providers like OpenAI and Anthropic. 

The investigation concludes that while Duck.ai is a legitimate tool for comparing multiple AI models without registration, the assertion that all top-tier models are free is incorrect. Users should verify pricing and privacy mechanisms directly through official sources rather than relying on social media posts that may use urgency tactics to drive engagement.

## Key points

- GPT-5.6 Terra and Sol require a paid plan on Duck.ai, contradicting viral free claims.
- Free tier includes Claude 4.5 Haiku, GPT-5.4 mini, and Mistral Small 4 without registration.
- Chat history is stored locally by default, with optional encrypted server backup available.

## Why it matters

Clarifies the actual cost and privacy trade-offs of using third-party AI aggregators, helping users avoid misinformation about free access to frontier models.

## Sources

1. [AI of Interest #01 Are GPT-5.6 and Claude completely free? I investigated the pricing and privacy of Duck.ai](https://note.com/tsuwami/n/n3bb1e7cf9c29?hl=en) (note.com, 2026-10-22)

## Cite

Digest AI, "Duck.ai offers free Claude 4.5 Haiku, but GPT-5.6 requires paid plan", 22 October 2026, https://digestai.news/story/duck-ai-offers-free-claude-4-5-haiku-but-gpt-5-6-requires-paid-plan

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