Search & Data APIs for AI Agents
The best search API for most AI agents is Tavily: search, extract, and crawl built for LLM context, with 1,000 free API credits a month (no credit card) and pay-as-you-go at $0.008 per credit. Exa is the pick for semantic search and deep-research runs, and Firecrawl when the real job is turning websites into clean markdown. Every figure below was read on the vendor's official pricing page.
Last checked: October 2026 · Researched from official documentation — hands-on API tests rolling out (methodology)
- Best overall Tavily
- Best semantic search Exa
- Best for scraping Firecrawl
- Best independent index Brave Search API
| # | Tool | What it is | Starting price (as published) | Free tier | Notable strength / limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tavily | Search and research API built specifically for AI agents and RAG: web search, content extraction, and crawling that return LLM-ready text, metered in a single credit currency. | Pay As You Go $0.008 per credit (no subscription required). Project plans start at 4,000 credits/month with higher rate limits (slider-priced on its pricing page). Enterprise custom (custom rate limits, SLAs, enterprise security) | Yes — Researcher plan free: 1,000 API credits/month, no credit card required; free for students | The best default for agent builders: one API covers find → extract → crawl, the free tier is real, and PAYG pricing is a single memorable number. The consideration is credit math — searches, extracts, and crawls consume credits at different rates (documented in its docs), so heavy extraction workloads need a budget check. |
| 2 | Exa | Neural search engine for AI: semantic search over its own web, people, company, and scholarly indexes, a contents endpoint for full-page text, and an Agent endpoint that runs deep-research tasks with citations. | Pay-as-you-go, per 1,000 requests: Instant Search $4, Fast/Auto Search $7, Deep Search $12, Deep-Reasoning $15 (each including up to 10 results; +$1 per additional result), Contents $1 per 1,000 pages, Answer $5, Monitors $15. Agent runs $0.012–$1.00 by effort level. Enterprise custom (zero data retention, HIPAA, custom indexes) | Yes — $10 of free credits every month, all endpoints, plus startup and education grants up to $1,000 in credits | The retrieval-quality pick: semantic ranking and specialized indexes (people, companies, scholarly) that keyword APIs don't offer, with per-endpoint pricing printed in full. Depth costs depth money — a Deep-Reasoning search is nearly 4× the Instant price before extra results. |
| 3 | Firecrawl | Web data API for agents: scrape, crawl, map, and search that return clean markdown or structured JSON, with an Interact browser endpoint and an Agent in preview — one credit balance across all endpoints. | Hobby $16/mo billed annually ($19 monthly) for 5,000 credits/month. Standard shown at $83/mo billed annually for 100,000 credits/month. Growth, Scale, and Enterprise above that. Credit rates are the same on every plan: 1 credit per page scraped/crawled/mapped, Search 2 credits per 10 results, Interact 2 credits per browser minute, JSON-format extraction +4 credits/page. Pay-as-you-go top-ups in $5 increments on paid plans | Yes — 1,000 credits every month, refreshed monthly, no credit card required; its Agent preview includes 5 free runs daily | The scraping specialist: when an agent needs whole sites as markdown rather than search snippets, nothing else here is as direct, and failed scrapes that return nothing are not charged. As a pure search API it is mid-pack — search is one endpoint among several, metered in the shared credit pool. |
| 4 | Brave Search API | Search API backed by Brave's own independent web index (40+ billion pages, 100+ million updates a day): search results with LLM-oriented context, an Answers endpoint for grounded summaries, and custom re-ranking via Goggles. | Credit-based plans with $5 of free credits applied monthly; the Answers endpoint is priced at $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input/output tokens. Search capacity up to 50 queries/second on standard plans. Enterprise custom (Zero Data Retention across the funnel, custom agreements, invoicing) | $5 in free credits every month — but a credit card is required to subscribe, stated by Brave as an anti-fraud measure (the card is not charged for free usage) | The independence pick: the only API here built on the vendor's own full web index rather than licensed or scraped results, SOC 2 Type II attested, with true Zero Data Retention available — a real differentiator for privacy-sensitive agents. Ranked fourth for agent builders because its agent-specific tooling (extraction, research endpoints) is thinner than Tavily's and Exa's. |
| 5 | Serper | Google Search API: fast access to Google results (web, news, images, places, and more) as structured JSON, popular for agents that need Google's ranking rather than an independent index. | Not yet verified — Serper's pricing did not appear in the readable text of its official site during our October 2026 check, and it publishes no standalone pricing page we could read | Not yet verified (see left) | Included because "just give me Google results" is a legitimate agent requirement and Serper is the name builders reach for. It is ranked last with pricing explicitly flagged: we will publish its rates when they can be read on Serper's own site — until then, treat any price quoted elsewhere as unconfirmed. |
| — | Jina AI | Search and reader infrastructure for AI (web search APIs and URL-to-markdown reading) — a known name in this category. | Not yet reviewed | Not yet reviewed | Jina AI's official site could not be read during our October 2026 check, so — as with ElevenLabs on our voice page before its verification — it is listed unranked with no figures rather than summarized from third-party roundups. It gets a ranked entry when its own pricing pages can be read. |
Verdicts
1. Tavily Best overall
The agent-native default: search, extract, and crawl in one API, results shaped for LLM context instead of human SERPs, and the simplest commercial model in the category — 1,000 free credits a month, then $0.008 a credit, no subscription required. Most research agents can be built entirely on it. Its ceiling is specialization: for semantic retrieval over curated indexes, Exa goes deeper.
2. Exa Best semantic search
The retrieval-quality pick: neural ranking over its own indexes — including people, company, and scholarly indexes no one else here offers — plus a deep-research Agent endpoint with per-effort pricing ($0.012–$1.00 a run). Its pricing page is also the most complete in the category: every endpoint, every rate, in the open. The $10 monthly free credit and up-to-$1,000 startup grants make evaluation cheap.
3. Firecrawl Best for scraping
The web-to-markdown machine: 1 credit per page whether you scrape, crawl, or map, 1,000 free credits a month, and honest billing (a scrape that returns nothing isn't charged). Agents that read documentation sites, pricing pages, or entire knowledge bases will live here. As a search engine it's a feature, not the focus — pair it with Tavily or Exa for discovery.
4. Brave Search API Best independent index
The principled choice: a genuinely independent 40-billion-page index, SOC 2 Type II, Zero Data Retention on offer, Goggles for custom re-ranking, and $5 of free credits monthly. Its Answers endpoint ($4 per 1,000 requests plus token costs) is a neat shortcut for grounded answers. Ranked fourth on agent-specific tooling depth, not on data quality — for privacy-sensitive deployments it may be your first choice.
5. Serper Pricing unverified
The Google-results utility: when an agent genuinely needs Google's SERP — local results, shopping, news ordering — a SERP API is the tool, and Serper is the developer favorite. It carries this page's unverified flag because its pricing never appeared in the readable text of its own site during our check (and there is no standalone pricing page to fall back on). Ranked on role, with numbers to follow when they can be read at the source.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best search API for AI agents?
Tavily for most builders (1,000 free credits/month, $0.008/credit PAYG, search + extract + crawl). Exa for semantic search and deep research. Firecrawl for turning sites into markdown. Brave for an independent index with zero-data-retention options.
How much does web search cost an agent?
About $4–$8 per 1,000 entry-level searches: Exa Instant $4/1k requests, Tavily $0.008/credit, Firecrawl 2 credits per 10 results against credit plans from $16/month. Deep/research modes cost more — Exa Deep is $12–$15/1k, its Agent $0.012–$1.00 per run.
Which search API has the best free tier?
Tavily and Firecrawl tie at 1,000 free credits every month (Tavily needs no card). Exa gives $10 of credits monthly plus startup grants up to $1,000. Brave gives $5 monthly but requires a card on file.
Search API or scraping — which does my agent need?
Usually both, in sequence: a search API to discover sources, an extractor/scraper to read them. Tavily and Exa bundle extraction with search; Firecrawl is the dedicated reading layer; the browser APIs in our Browser Automation category handle pages that need interaction.
Tavily or Exa?
Tavily for breadth-per-dollar and one simple credit ($0.008) across search/extract/crawl. Exa for neural ranking, specialized indexes (people, companies, scholarly), and deep-research runs. Many production stacks run Tavily as default and Exa for hard queries.
Sources (official pages, checked October 14, 2026): tavily.com/pricing · exa.ai/pricing · firecrawl.dev/pricing · brave.com/search/api. Serper's pricing could not be read on serper.dev during this check and is flagged unverified; Jina AI's site could not be read at all and it is listed as not-yet-reviewed. No third-party sources were used for any figure on this page.