Skipping past the top two sponsored results in DDG really isn't that big a deal and still diversifies the search market from Google's monopoly, so paying the equivalent of a streaming subscription service... idk. None of my friends seem interested in paying for what is currently free (on top of the hassle of being logged in everywhere all the time) so sharing a duo/family account isn't an option for me either. Maybe that's something that would put it in reach for you?
Edit: apparently they've shared what it costs them to provide the service:
> a single search costs us 1.5 cents to deliver
https://kagifeedback.org/d/687-implement-regional-pricing/23
They charge 54€$/year for 3600 searches, which is.... precisely 1.5 cents per search. That sounds a little bit too convenient that the claimed cost price is precisely what they charge
This is either not the cost price or relies on people not using their subscription, otherwise you could never recoup R&D costs. Maybe this is total expenses divided by number of searches being run? I.e., it includes wages for the devs working on new features, their administration, etc. (fixed costs) and isn't actually the expense that each additional search incurs to deliver
DDG displays up to 2 ads above search results (most of the time I get none: trying just now, I saw 1 ad when doing two product searches and one knowledge search). The most favorable figure for 1000 ad impressions is 6$ according to <https://spideraf.com/learning-hub/what-is-the-average-cost-p...>. That's 0.6 cents per ad if the advertising network costs nothing. Advertising on DDG goes via Microsoft, so they'll take a cut: <https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/adverti...>. Guessing that they take 10% (I expect it's more), you're looking at 0.2 cents average revenue for each search I did just now. (Not a reliable figure but as a ballpark estimate.) DDG must have much lower costs somehow (maybe they just take results from Bing verbatim and have few costs of their own)