Data & Retrieval
Web search & grounding APIs
Search the live web from your app or agent.
What it is
Search APIs return fresh web results (links, snippets, sometimes full page content) so LLM apps and agents can ground answers in current information.
How pricing works
Billed per query; full-page content or AI answers cost more.
We compare everything in one unit: USD per 1K queries.
Typical uses
- Agents that research the web
- Fact-checking LLM answers
- News and price monitoring
What to compare
- Result quality and freshness
- Full content extraction
- Rate limits
Watch out for
- Check whether you may store or display results; terms differ.
All 7 APIs, cheapest first
Free to browseTick 2 to 4 APIs to compare them side by side.
| API | $ / 1K queries | Full page content | AI answers | Typical latency | Quality | Price data | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firecrawl Search Firecrawl | $1.66 | Yes | No | — | – | Verified Oct 6, 2026 | |
| Brave Search API Brave Search API | $5.00 | No | Yes | 400 ms | 78 | Verified Oct 4, 2026 | |
| Perplexity Search API Perplexity | $5.00 | No | No | — | – | Verified Oct 6, 2026 | |
| Exa Search Exa | $7.00 | Yes | Yes | 600 ms | 86 | Verified Oct 4, 2026 | |
| Tavily Search Tavily | $8.00 | Yes | Yes | 800 ms | 82 | Verified Oct 4, 2026 | |
| Z.ai Web Search Z.ai (Zhipu GLM) | $10.00 | No | No | — | – | Verified Oct 6, 2026 | |
| SerpApi SerpApi | $15.00 | No | No | — | – | Verified Oct 6, 2026 |