Best Free Web Search API Tools

Real-time web search API for AI agents, with search, extract, crawl and research endpoints. The free Researcher plan gives 1,000 API credits per month with no credit card required, resetting on the first of each month. A basic search costs 1 credit and an advanced search 2; extract costs 1 credit per 5 successful URLs (2 at advanced depth); research costs 4 to 250 credits per request. Search and Extract can also be called without an API key, free and rate-limited. Pay-as-you-go costs $0.008 per credit; the Project plan is $30 per month for 4,000 credits.

• When monthly free credits are used up, requests stop until credits reset or the account upgrades. Pay-as-you-go charging applies if enabled. (From tavily.com/pricing, read 2026-10-06.)
• Production API keys need an active paid plan or pay-as-you-go enabled. Development keys are limited to 100 requests per minute, production keys 1,000. (From docs.tavily.com/documentation/rate-limits, read 2026-10-10.)
• Tavily may use your query data to improve its services; an account setting turns this off, and then query data is not stored or used for improvements. (From help.tavily.com/articles/4205958832-understanding-the-allow-use-of-query-data-setting, read 2026-10-06.)
• Tavily for Startups gives up to 100,000 API credits for 6 months to accepted startups: early-stage, VC-backed companies building AI agents or LLMs, typically pre-seed through Series A. (From tavily.com/startups, read 2026-10-16.)
• Students get 4 months of the Project plan (4,000 API credits a month) free after verifying with a student email address or student ID. (From help.tavily.com/articles/6606514713-student-account, read 2026-10-16.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it web_search_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://tavily.com/, where it says: “Fast and secure APIs for web search and content extraction”. How we use this

Web search and research APIs for AI agents. Organizations with a credit card on file get $5 of free credit each month, and unused credit expires at month end. $5 covers up to 1,000 requests a month in Search's Basic or Advanced mode (Advanced is the API default), or 5,000 in Turbo or Fast mode; usage beyond $5 is billed to the card at standard rates. The $5 monthly credit applies to all Parallel APIs at their standard rates. Extract costs $1 per 1,000 URLs, and the Decisions API costs $1 per 1,000 requests, up to 100 questions per request. One monthly credit per organization and per card; marketplace and postpaid organizations are not eligible. The pricing page also offers "up to $80 at signup" without stating its terms. A hosted Search MCP is free without an account or API key, at lower rate limits, for personal and hobby use. Then pay as you go: Search $1 per 1,000 requests (Turbo, Fast) or $5 (Basic, Advanced) with 10 results, at 600 requests a minute.

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it web_search_api. We read that on 2026-09-27 from https://parallel.ai/products/search, where it says: “The highest accuracy web search API, built from the ground up for AIs”. How we use this

$5 in free credits every month, applied automatically. Brave's "up to $20" figure is $5 on each of four plans: Search, Answers, Spellcheck and Autosuggest. Search is $5 per 1,000 requests; Answers is $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million tokens. Web search, news, videos, images, LLM context endpoints. 50 queries/sec. Credit card required. The earlier free plan (2,000 queries/mo) ended Feb 2026. The tools of Brave's MCP server include brave_web_search, brave_news_search, brave_image_search, brave_llm_context and brave_summarizer.

• Keeping any data from the API is prohibited. Storing results or training an LLM requires an arrangement with Brave. (From api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/resources/help-feedback, read 2026-10-06.)
• Once the free $5 and any bought credits are used up, requests are rejected until funds are added. Auto-reload is optional. (From api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/resources/help-feedback, read 2026-10-06.)
• Unused free monthly credit does not carry over. (From api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/resources/help-feedback, read 2026-10-06.)
• Brave's Service Credit Terms say credits, bought or free, expire one year after they are issued or when the account closes, while its help page says bought credits do not expire. (From api-dashboard.search.brave.com/terms-of-service/credit-terms, read 2026-10-07.)
• Bought credits are not refunded. (From api-dashboard.search.brave.com/terms-of-service/credit-terms, read 2026-10-07.)
• Brave's February launch post says the $5 monthly credit requires attributing the Brave Search API on the project's website, while Brave's Terms of Use (updated September 1, 2026) make attribution optional. Brave's help page describes getting the credit with a card at signup and does not mention attribution. (From api-dashboard.search.brave.com/terms-of-service, read 2026-10-11.)
• Brave keeps a record of search queries sent through an API account for up to 90 days for billing and troubleshooting. Zero data retention is available only for Enterprise customers. (From api-dashboard.search.brave.com/documentation/resources/privacy-notice, read 2026-10-11.)
• Brave's Search API Terms of Use license the API for the customer's own applications, products or services. Free credits are under the same Terms. The customer may not make the API available to third parties or get around rate limits or service limits, including by creating multiple accounts. (From api-dashboard.search.brave.com/terms-of-service, read 2026-10-30.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it web_search_api. We read that on 2026-10-19 from https://brave.com/search/api/, where it says: “The real-time search data your chatbots & agents need to generate answers.”. How we use this

Web search API for AI agents. Accounts created with a professional email address get $20 of credit, topped back up to $20 each month (Linkup's docs); the pricing page calls this 4,000 free queries and states no period. Linkup's app asks other sign-ups to add a card, with no charge, to unlock the credit. Rate limit: 10 queries a second per organization. Then pay as you go from a prepaid balance: search $0.005 a call ($0.006 with a sourced answer or structured output), deep search $0.05 to $0.055, fetch from $0.001. Top-ups of $1,000 or more earn 10-20% bonus credit.

• Startups can apply for a one-time credit of up to $5,000 by telling Linkup what they are building. (From linkup.so/startups, read 2026-10-12.)
• When the account's credit runs out, the API responds with HTTP 429. (From docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/platform/pricing, read 2026-10-12.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it web_search_api. We read that on 2026-09-27 from https://www.linkup.so/llms.txt, where it says: “Linkup is a web search API that gives AI applications and agents real-time, grounded access to the web through a single API call”. How we use this

Search and research API for AI agents: one credit balance covers Search, Contents and DeepResearch. Accounts without a plan get free credits every month, which reset and do not roll over: 2,000 with a work email, no card needed; 1,000 with a personal or university email, which needs a card on the account from the second month (adding one charges nothing; one card unlocks free credits for one account, and prepaid cards don't count). Free monthly credits cover web search, arXiv and PubMed; other sources need a plan. A web search returning ten results uses 1 credit. Then pay as you go: $10 buys 1,600 credits, which last 12 months; Ridiculously Cheap is $29 a month for 5,000 credits. There are no overage charges: a request the balance cannot cover gets HTTP 402.

• In the first month only, the first 1,000 free credits with a work email (500 with a personal email) also work on every source on Valyu's standard plans, such as filings, trials or patents. Valyu's own pricing page at www.valyu.ai states the 1,000 without the first-month limit or the personal-email figure. (From docs.valyu.ai/pricing, read 2026-11-12.)
• Valyu's free credits were a one-time grant until late 2026: its changelog entry for October 2026 gives new accounts $10 of credits, or $20 with a company email, usable on every standard-plan source. Its pricing page now gives a monthly allowance that resets each month. (From docs.valyu.ai/pricing, read 2026-11-12.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it web_search_api. We read that on 2026-11-12 from https://docs.valyu.ai/llms.txt, where it says: “One API finds evidence in filings, papers, trials, patents, market data and the web, and returns it with citations.”. How we use this

Real-time search engine scraping API. Returns structured JSON results for Google, YouTube, Bing, Baidu, Walmart, and many other engines. Free plan: 250 searches/month, 50 requests/hour throughput limit. Month-to-month, cancel anytime. See [serpapi.com/pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing).

• SerpApi's U.S. Legal Shield, its cover for legal claims over scraping search engines, comes only with the Production plan and above, not the Free plan. (From serpapi.com/faq, read 2026-10-07.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it web_search_api. We read that on 2026-10-19 from https://serpapi.com/use-cases/web-search-api, where it says: “Turn raw web data into JSON or Markdown for your AI applications.”. How we use this

Web Search API for AI agents. 100 free queries a day with no API key or account through the keyless MCP profile (api.you.com/mcp?profile=free), limited to the you-search and you-discover tools. New API accounts also get a $100 sign-up credit with no credit card required; no page says it renews or expires. Then pay as you go with no minimums: Web Search API $5.00 per 1,000 calls with up to 100 results per call, live page extraction $1.00 per 1,000 pages, at 10 requests a second on self-serve accounts.

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it web_search_api. We read that on 2026-09-27 from https://you.com/llms.txt, where it says: “Returns real-time web and news results as LLM-ready JSON.”. How we use this

Web search API for AI agents with Search, Contents, Answer, Monitors and Agent endpoints. The free tier gives $10 in credits each month, up to 2,500 Lite searches, resetting on the first of the month without rollover, plus a one-time $10 onboarding bonus; no credit card or other payment method required. Only a user's first team gets the free credits. Free teams get 10 QPS on search. Search costs $4 per 1,000 requests with up to 10 results for Lite, $7 for Auto, and $12 for Deep. Contents costs $1 per 1,000 pages per content type. Since October 19, 2026, Instant, Fast and Deep Reasoning are legacy search types that keep working at their current prices. Exa recommends Lite in place of Instant and Fast. Search and Contents can also be paid per request over x402 in USDC on Base or Solana, with no API key. Note — 2026-10-01: Between 2026-09-16 and 2026-10-01, Exa replaced the $20 sign-up credit with a one-time $10 bonus for completing onboarding, which only a user's first team earns. The $10 monthly credit, available in full on the day of sign-up, continues. Source ↗

• When a team's credits run out, requests return 402 Payment Required. Auto recharge is optional. (From exa.ai/docs/admin/billing, read 2026-10-06.)
• Exa uses anonymized data on default plans to improve its models. Zero Data Retention is available only on Enterprise plans. (From trust.exa.ai/faq, read 2026-10-06.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it web_search_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://exa.ai/pricing, where it says: “Exa is a modern AI search engine with SERP API, website crawler tools, and deep research API”. How we use this