TL;DR
- There's no free web search API for production, but several free tiers cover a prototype or a side project.
- Biggest monthly allowances: Exa ($10 a month, up to 2,500 lite searches), Brave ($5 a month, about 1,000), Tavily and Firecrawl (1,000 credits a month).
- Biggest one-off: Serper (2,500 queries) and Keirolabs (750 credits, no card).
- When you outgrow free, the cheapest paid search is Keirolabs lite at $0.03–0.10 per 1,000, so $29.99 a month buys about 300,000 searches.
“Free web search API” is one of the most searched phrases in this whole space, and most of the answers online are out of date. Bing’s free tier is gone with the whole Bing API. Google’s Custom Search free quota ends with the API on January 1, 2027. And DuckDuckGo never had a real search API.
What’s left is a set of genuinely useful free tiers from newer providers. Here’s every one worth knowing, and how far it actually stretches.
Every free tier, compared
Checked on each vendor’s pricing page, November 5, 2026.
| API | Free allowance | Resets | Card needed | Roughly buys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exa | $10 credit (+ $10 one-time onboarding bonus) | Monthly | No | Up to 2,500 lite searches |
| Brave | $5 credit | Monthly | Yes | About 1,000 searches |
| Tavily | 1,000 credits | Monthly | No | 1,000 basic searches |
| Firecrawl | 1,000 credits | Monthly | No | 1,000 pages, or 5,000 search results |
| Parallel | Up to 5,000 requests a month, plus up to $80 at signup | Monthly | Check | Up to 5,000 searches a month |
| Serper | 2,500 queries | Once | No | 2,500 Google searches |
| Keirolabs | 750 credits | Once | No | Searches, page text, answers, deep search |
| You.com | $100 signup credit | Once | Check | About 20,000 searches |
| Jina Reader | 10M tokens per new key; Reader works without a key at 20 RPM | Once | No | Page-to-text, plus search with a key |
Stack them. A prototype can run on Exa’s monthly $10 for neural search, Brave’s $5 for independent results and Serper’s 2,500 for anything that needs Google. That’s a lot of free searching while you figure out which one you actually want to pay for.
The catches
Free tiers are designed to get you to a paid plan. Know the limits before you build on one:
- Rate limits are low. Free keys are often limited to a few requests per second or less. Fine for a demo, painful for a batch job.
- One-time credits run out. Serper, Keirolabs and You.com give a lump sum once. Plan for when it’s gone.
- Cards are sometimes required. Brave needs a card even for the free credit, to stop abuse.
- Storage rights may be excluded. Some providers don’t let free (or cheap) plans store results. Brave, for one, ties storage rights to specific plans.
- Startup programs beat free tiers. If you’re a startup, apply: Linkup offers up to $5,000 in credits, You.com up to $1,000, Tavily 100,000 credits and Parallel up to $250. Details on our deals page.
What about Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo?
- Google: the Custom Search JSON API gave 100 free queries a day, but it’s closed to new customers and shuts down January 1, 2027.
- Bing: retired August 11, 2025. No free tier, no paid tier.
- DuckDuckGo: the Instant Answer API returns instant answers, not web results. It’s not a search API.
When free runs out: the cheapest way to keep going
Most projects outgrow free in a few weeks. Here’s what the next step costs per 1,000 searches:
| API | Cheapest paid search per 1,000 | Smallest paid step |
|---|---|---|
| Keirolabs | $0.03–0.10 | $29.99/month (≈300,000 lite searches) or a $10 pack |
| Serper | $0.30–1.00 | $50 pack (50,000) |
| Parallel | $1 | Pay as you go |
| Exa | $4 | Pay as you go |
| Brave | $5 | Pay as you go |
| Tavily | $5–8 | $30/month (4,000 credits) |
This is the table that makes Keirolabs the obvious next step after free. For $29.99 a month you get about 300,000 lite searches, which is more than most “free” tiers give you in a year. The same key adds page text, cited answers, deep search (96.5% on SimpleQA in a public benchmark) and Google SERP results. Through Black Friday, KEIRO20 takes 20% off. Start with 750 free credits.
FAQ
Is there a completely free web search API?
Not one you can rely on in production. Free tiers and one-time credits are for prototyping.
What’s the best free web search API for an AI agent?
Exa’s monthly $10 or Tavily’s 1,000 monthly credits, both without a card. For an agent that searches a lot, the free tier won’t last, so look at the cost per 1,000 after free.
Is there a free Google search API?
No official one. Serper’s 2,500 free queries at signup are the most generous Google option. See what is a SERP API.
Do free tiers include page content?
Some do. Exa, Tavily, Firecrawl and Keirolabs return page text; Brave and Serper return snippets.