n8n Workflow: Find Software Alternatives via DuckDuckGo

Find real software alternatives fast—using DuckDuckGo inside n8n

This n8n workflow searches DuckDuckGo for a software product’s alternatives and generates a clean comparison table: each alternative tool, how many separate sites mention it, and a quoted sentence from one of those sites. Best of all, it’s designed for self-hosted n8n—no API key or account needed for the DuckDuckGo search itself.

What this workflow does

• Collect input: The workflow form asks for the software product name (and optionally what kind of product it is).
• Search for alternative listings: It runs one DuckDuckGo search and reads the top 12 result pages.
• Filter relevant pages: Code keeps pages that list alternatives, excludes the product’s own site (based on its domain), and treats each remaining page as one source site.
• Extract alternative tools with evidence: Using a chat-model node, it identifies the tools each page lists as alternatives and copies a sentence from the page.
• Count citations per tool: It keeps a tool name only if the quoted sentence is actually on the page. Then it tallies how many separate sites mentioned that tool (excluding the page’s vote for its own tool).
• Show results: The form displays the table, which sites were read, and which pages were left out and why.

Use cases

• Quickly validate migration options when considering a switch from one software product to alternatives (e.g., for budgeting or vendor risk).
• Help SaaS operators and automation engineers gather evidence-based alternative recommendations for internal reviews.
• Turn ad-hoc research into a repeatable n8n automation workflow for ongoing software evaluation.

Technical details

• Requires self-hosted n8n with n8n-nodes-duckduckgo-search installed under Settings → Community nodes.
• Uses form + form trigger, plus if and code nodes for filtering/counting logic.
• Uses an OpenRouter chat-model node by default (Gemini 3.8 Flash) to extract alternatives in JSON-reliable output.
• Includes supporting nodes like sticky note for workflow guidance.