I tried to use 4get as a DDG proxy, all the instances I tried kept getting blocked by DuckDuckGo. It wasn’t a great experience. I also tried SearX and SearXNG many times, I always keep coming back to DuckDuckGo, because it just works and it gives me decent results. With SearX, I often had trouble finding relevant results. I tried various options and different search engine backends in SearXNG, but I never really liked it. DDG is definitely far from perfect, but so are the other options, and I think DDG is the best and easiest to use for less technical users.