Search API prices · 2026-10-26

Cheap web search API for AI agents: $1.00 per 1,000 searches with page Markdown

An agent needs more than links: it needs the text of the pages. Priced that way, most search APIs cost several dollars per 1,000 searches, because page content is billed on top. ContextFetch is $1.00 per 1,000 with the Markdown of the results included, and it speaks the Exa, Tavily and Firecrawl APIs, so switching is one argument.

Try it free, no key Switch in one line

Ranked

Search plus the Markdown of 10 pages, per 1,000

List prices from each provider's own pricing page, cheapest first, for providers whose prices make it computable.

Provider	USD / 1k	How it adds up	Source
ContextFetch	$1.00	Markdown included in the search price	our pricing
Exa	$7.00	$7 auto/fast search, text + highlights for 10 results included	exa.ai
Tavily	$8.00	basic search; raw_content at no extra credit	docs.tavily.com
Parallel	$11.00	$1 search + 10 extracts at $1/1k	parallel.ai
Linkup	$15.00	$5 search + 10 fetches at $1/1k	docs.linkup.so
You.com	$15.00	$5 search + 10 pages at $1/1k	you.com
Valyu	$25.00	10 results at $1.5/1k + 10 pages at $1/1k	docs.valyu.ai
Firecrawl	$45.60	2 search + 10 scrape credits at the Hobby rate	docs.firecrawl.dev

Compare

What one search includes

Search APIs for AI agents compared by list price per 1,000 searches, as of 2026-10-26.
Provider	Per 1k searches	Page Markdown	Pruned context	Keyless MCP
ContextFetch	$1.00$0.83 with $500+ top-ups	Yesincluded	Yesincluded	Yes25/day
Exa	$7.00$4.00 instant	Yes10 results	Yeshighlights	Yesrate-limited
Tavily	$8.00$16.00 advanced	Yesincluded	snippets	Yeskeyless header
DeepSeek	$0.755 QPS cap	Not published	Nono budget	CN routing
Firecrawl	$7.60Hobby plan	+1 credit/page	+4 credits/page	Yesdaily limits
Perplexity	$1.00fast; $5 standard	Nosnippets	Yestoken budgets	Nokey or OAuth
Parallel	$1.00turbo; $5 basic	+$1/1k pages	Yesexcerpts	Yesrate-limited
Linkup	$5.00standard depth	+$1/1k pages	Not published	Nokey
You.com	$5.00	+$1/1k pages	Not published	Yes100/day
Brave	$5.00$5/mo free credit	Noextracts	YesLLM Context	Nokey
Valyu	$15.00$1.50/1k results	+$1/1k pages	Not published	Nokey
Serper	$1.00$0.30 at volume	No	No	Not published
SerpApi	$25.00Starter plan	No	No	Nokey
Bright Data	$1.50SERP API	No	No	Notoken
Jina	—billed in tokens	Yesincluded	Not published	Yesrate-limited

DeepSeek Search/Fetch: $0.75/1k, throttled at 5 QPS, no token-budget pruning, CN data routing. ContextFetch: $1.00 per 1k ($0.83 with $500+ top-ups), 100+ QPS burst, batch of 20 URLs, cross-encoder token pruning (max_tokens), EU hosting, cached searches under 40 ms. List prices as of 2026-10-26; — means not published. Sources: Exa pricing, Exa MCP, Tavily pricing, Tavily credits, Tavily MCP, DeepSeek pricing, Firecrawl pricing, Firecrawl search, Firecrawl MCP, Perplexity pricing, Parallel pricing, Linkup pricing, You.com pricing, Brave Search API, Valyu pricing, Serper pricing, SerpApi pricing, Bright Data pricing, Jina Reader.

Calculator

Your volume, your bill

Set your monthly searches and pages per search. Everything runs in your browser.

Searches per month

Pages with text per search

Tavily search depth

Provider	Per month	Basis
ContextFetch, list price	$100.00	Default search, page Markdown included
ContextFetch, $500+ top-ups	$83.33	Same, with the 20% top-up bonus
Exa auto/fast	$700.00	Search plus page text for 10 pages per search
Tavily basic	$800.00	Pay-as-you-go credits
Firecrawl Hobby	$4,560.00	Search plus a Markdown scrape of 10 pages, $19/mo plan rate
Firecrawl Scale	$718.80	Same, at its lowest per-credit rate (yearly plan)

List prices as of 2026-10-26; excludes free tiers, plans and volume deals. Sources are under the comparison table.

Switch

Keep your code, change one line

ContextFetch implements the Exa, Tavily and Firecrawl search APIs, so the highlighted line is the whole migration.

from exa_py import Exa exa = Exa(api_key="EXA_API_KEY")

from exa_py import Exa exa = Exa(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY", base_url="https://api.contextfetch.dev")

from tavily import TavilyClient tavily = TavilyClient(api_key="tvly-...")

from tavily import TavilyClient tavily = TavilyClient(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY", api_base_url="https://api.contextfetch.dev/tavily")

from firecrawl import Firecrawl fc = Firecrawl(api_key="fc-...")

from firecrawl import Firecrawl fc = Firecrawl(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY", api_url="https://api.contextfetch.dev")

# Claude Code: keyless, zero signupclaude mcp add contextfetch -- npx -y @contextfetch/mcp # Optional paid keyclaude mcp add contextfetch -e CONTEXTFETCH_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY -- npx -y @contextfetch/mcp # Claude Desktop / Cursor (mcpServers JSON){ "contextfetch": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@contextfetch/mcp"] } }

Questions

What is the cheapest web search API for AI agents?

Counting what an agent needs, search plus the text of the pages, ContextFetch is the cheapest at list price: $1.00 per 1,000 searches with the Markdown of the results included ($0.83 with the 20% bonus on $500+ top-ups). The next cheapest with 10 pages of Markdown is Exa at $7.00 (prices checked 2026-10-26).

Are there cheaper search APIs if I only need links?

Perplexity Search (fast) and Parallel Search (turbo) list $1.00 and $1.00 per 1,000 searches, the same as ContextFetch, but return excerpts rather than full pages. Fetching the pages costs extra there; on ContextFetch it is included.

Do I have to rewrite my agent to switch?

No. ContextFetch implements the Exa, Tavily and Firecrawl search APIs, so exa_py, exa-js, tavily-python, @tavily/core, firecrawl-py and firecrawl-js keep working after you change the base URL.

Is there a free tier?

Yes. 25 searches a day with no key and no signup, and a keyless MCP server: claude mcp add contextfetch -- npx -y @contextfetch/mcp