TL;DR
- A web search API takes a query over HTTP and returns search results as JSON: titles, URLs, snippets, and sometimes full page text or an answer.
- There are three kinds: own-index APIs (Brave, Exa, Keirolabs), SERP scrapers that return Google's page (Serper, SerpApi), and AI search APIs built for LLMs (Tavily, Parallel, Linkup).
- Prices run from $0.03 to $25 per 1,000 searches. The cheapest we track is Keirolabs lite at $0.03–0.10.
- Pick by who reads the results: people, a ranking tool, or a model.
A web search API is the plumbing that lets software search the web the way you do in a browser. Your code sends a query, the API sends back results as JSON, and you do whatever you like with them: show them to users, feed them to a model, track rankings, or build a dataset.
That’s the whole idea. The interesting part is where the results come from, because that decides the price, the speed, the legal risk and how good the results are for your job.
How a web search API works
Every web search API does the same three things:
- Takes a query over HTTP, usually with filters like country, language, freshness or a domain list.
- Finds matching pages, either in its own index or by asking a search engine.
- Returns structured results: title, URL and snippet at minimum. Many also return full page text, extracted highlights, or a written answer with citations.
A request looks like this on almost every provider:
curl -X POST https://api.keirolabs.cloud/api/v2/search/fast \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KEIRO_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"query": "latest rust release"}'What changes between providers is step 2.
The three kinds of web search API
| Kind | Where results come from | Examples | Per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Own index | The provider crawls the web and runs its own search engine | Brave, Exa, Keirolabs | $0.03–12 |
| SERP scraper | The provider fetches Google’s (or Bing’s) results page and parses it | Serper, SerpApi, DataForSEO | $0.30–25 |
| AI search | Built for LLMs: results plus cleaned page text, ranked excerpts or an answer | Tavily, Parallel, Linkup, You.com | $1–8 |
The lines blur. Exa and Keirolabs run their own index and return page text for LLMs. Keirolabs also has a Google SERP endpoint on the same key. But the three buckets are still the best way to think about it.
Own-index APIs
The provider runs a crawler, stores billions of pages and ranks them itself. Nobody upstream can switch it off, which matters a lot after Bing’s API was retired and Google’s Custom Search closed.
- Pros: no scraping risk, stable pricing, often the cheapest per call, fast.
- Cons: results won’t match Google’s exactly.
SERP scrapers
These give you Google’s results page as JSON: organic results, ads, People Also Ask, maps, shopping. They’re the tool for SEO, rank tracking and anything where “what Google shows” is the point. More in what is a SERP API.
- Pros: exactly what Google shows, rich result types.
- Cons: you depend on someone scraping Google, which Google doesn’t permit; snippets only, no page text.
AI search APIs
Built for the case where a model reads the results. They return clean page content, compressed excerpts or a cited answer, so you can skip running a scraper. Most of them run on their own index or an aggregation of others.
- Pros: less glue code, fewer tokens wasted, built-in answers.
- Cons: pricier per call than raw search; quality claims are mostly self-reported (see our benchmarks).
What a web search API costs
Prices are list prices from each vendor’s own pricing page, checked November 5, 2026.
| API | Cheapest mode per 1,000 | Free allowance |
|---|---|---|
| Keirolabs | $0.03–0.10 (lite) | 750 credits |
| Serper | $0.30–1.00 | 2,500 queries once |
| Parallel | $1 (turbo/fast) | Free monthly requests |
| Exa | $4 (lite) | $10 a month |
| Brave | $5 | $5 of credits a month |
| Tavily | $5–8 | 1,000 credits a month |
| OpenAI / Claude web search | $10 + tokens | none |
The search price is rarely your biggest cost. If a model reads 3,000 tokens of results per search at $3 per million input tokens, that’s $9 per 1,000 searches just to read them. An API that returns tight, relevant text can beat a cheaper one that dumps whole pages. The calculator prices every mode at your volume.
Which kind do you need?
Answer one question: who reads the results?
People read them
Own index (Brave)
Results pages, site search, a research tool for humans. Independent, stable, no scraping risk.
A ranking tool reads them
SERP scraper (Serper)
Rank tracking and SEO need Google’s exact page. Nothing else will do.
A model reads them
AI search (Exa, Parallel, Tavily)
Page text or excerpts in one call, so your agent doesn’t need a scraper.
Price decides it
Keirolabs
Own index from $0.03 per 1,000, plus page text, answers, deep search and Google SERP on one key.
Where Keirolabs fits
Keirolabs is Keirolabs’ search, browser and data API. It’s worth knowing about whichever kind you need, because it covers all three on one key and one credit balance:
- Own index: lite search at $0.10 per 1,000 on Essential, $0.06 on Pro and $0.03 on Startup. Fast search is 0.5 credits.
- AI search: search + page markdown (1.5 credits), cited answers (1 credit), deep search with ranked evidence (2 credits).
- SERP: Google results as JSON (2 credits).
- Extract and MCP: any URL to markdown with JS rendering when search isn’t enough, plus an MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and LangChain.
Its deep search found the answer for 96.5% of 200 SimpleQA questions in a public benchmark repo, the highest score we track with code and results you can check.
750 free credits at signup, no card. Through Black Friday, code KEIRO20 takes 20% off any paid plan: Keirolabs pricing.
FAQ
Is there a free web search API?
Not for production, but several have useful free allowances. See free web search APIs for every option and how far each one goes.
Does Google have a web search API?
Not a self-serve one any more. The Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers and ends January 1, 2027. For Google’s results, use a SERP API.
What’s the difference between a search API and a scraping API?
A search API finds pages for a query. A scraping API fetches a page you already have the URL for. Many projects need both, and some APIs do both. Full breakdown: web scraping API vs search API.
Which web search API is best?
It depends on the job. Our best web search APIs guide picks a winner per use case.