Compare web search API pricing: Exa, Tavily, SerpAPI, Brave Search, Bing, Algolia, and scraping APIs Firecrawl, ScraperAPI, Bright Data — free tiers, per-query rates and how to get an API key.
These three return search-engine results as JSON, but they solve different problems. SerpAPI parses the full SERP — ads, maps pack, shopping, knowledge panel — so it costs more per search. Brave Search is the cheapest way to get a plain, independent web index at scale, with the most generous free tier (2,000 queries/month, no card required). Bing Web Search still works but Microsoft is retiring the standalone API, so it's a poor pick for a new project.
| Provider | Free / month | Beyond free | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| SerpAPI | ~100 searches | from ~$75/mo (~5k) | Full SERP data — ads, maps, shopping |
| Brave Search | 2,000 queries | ~$3 / 1,000 | Cheapest independent index at scale |
| Bing Web Search | ~1,000 queries | ~$15–25 / 1,000 | Legacy only — Microsoft is retiring it |
"Search API" gets used for three different jobs, and picking the wrong one wastes budget. SerpAPI and Brave Search return Google or Bing's results as JSON — use them to build a search engine or an AI agent that needs live web answers. Firecrawl, ScraperAPI and Bright Data instead fetch and render a page you point them at — Firecrawl converts it to clean markdown for RAG pipelines (from ~$16/mo for ~3,000 pages/mo), while ScraperAPI (from ~$49/mo, credit-based) and Bright Data (billed per GB or per request, ~$5–15/GB for residential proxies) exist for high-volume scraping behind anti-bot protection. Algolia is different again — it's hosted search for content you already own (your site, app or docs), not a way to query the open web; its free tier covers roughly 10,000 searches and 1M records per month.
A search API (SerpAPI, Brave Search) returns Google or Bing's own results as JSON — use it to build a search engine or an AI agent that needs live web answers. A scraping API (Firecrawl, ScraperAPI, Bright Data) instead fetches and renders a page you point it at, handling anti-bot protection and JavaScript rendering. Algolia is a third category — hosted search for content you already own (your site or app), not a way to query the open web.
Brave Search — 2,000 queries per month with no credit card required to start. SerpAPI's free tier is smaller (about 100 searches/month) but returns richer parsed data — ads, maps pack, shopping and knowledge panel — that Brave's plain web index doesn't include.
It still works, but Microsoft is retiring the standalone Bing Search APIs, so it's a poor choice for a new project. For web-grounding in an AI agent, Microsoft points new projects to Azure AI Agent grounding; for an independent search API, Brave Search or SerpAPI are the usual replacements.
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