Web search APIs for AI, compared
Free tiers, prices and what each API can actually do — search, extract a page, crawl a site, research a topic. Facts come from each provider's own pages; every comparison links its sources.
| API | Free tier | ≈ per 1,000 searches | Search | Extract | Crawl | Research | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| InferaWeb | 5,000 searches + 2,000 extracts / month, renews monthly, no card | $1 (pay as you go) · ~$0.19 on Pro | |||||
| Tavily | 1,000 credits / month, no card | $8 basic · $16 advanced (pay as you go) | Compare → | ||||
| Exa | $10 credit / month (≈2,500 searches), no card | $4 (Instant) · $7 (Fast / Auto) | Compare → | ||||
| Serper | 2,500 free queries, no card | $1.00 (Starter) → $0.30 (largest pack) | Compare → | ||||
| SerpApi | 250 searches / month | $25 (Starter) → $3.75 (largest plan) | Compare → | ||||
| Brave Search API | $5 credit / month (≈1,000 searches), card required | $5 | Compare → | ||||
| Firecrawl | 1,000 credits / month, no card | ~$6.40 (Hobby) · ~$1.66 (Standard) | Compare → | ||||
| Jina Reader | 10M tokens for a new API key | Token-based (depends on output length) | Compare → | ||||
| Perplexity Sonar | No free tier listed | $5 (Search API) · $1 (fast) | Compare → |
Tavily is a search API built for AI agents, with extract, crawl and research endpoints priced in credits. InferaWeb covers the same four jobs with a larger monthly free tier and simpler per-1,000 pricing.
Exa is a neural search engine for AI with contents, answer and deep-search endpoints. InferaWeb is a lower-cost alternative that adds real site crawling and a bigger free tier.
Serper is a fast, low-cost Google search results API. InferaWeb adds what Serper doesn't: reading pages into clean text, crawling sites and research — with a monthly free tier.
SerpApi returns structured results from Google and many other engines. InferaWeb is a cheaper option for AI apps that need search plus page extraction, crawling and research.
The Brave Search API serves results from Brave's own independent index, plus an answers endpoint. InferaWeb adds page extraction and site crawling, and doesn't ask for a card.
Firecrawl turns websites into markdown with scrape, crawl, map and search endpoints. InferaWeb covers search, extract and crawl too, with more free usage and cheaper search.
Jina's Reader (r.jina.ai) turns a URL into LLM-friendly text and its Search (s.jina.ai) searches the web, billed in tokens. InferaWeb adds site crawling and research, with a plain monthly allowance instead of tokens.
Perplexity's Sonar API generates cited answers with an LLM, and its Search API returns ranked results. InferaWeb gives you the raw web data — results, page text, crawls — with a free monthly tier.
Prices and plans change; each comparison shows the date its facts were checked. Trademarks belong to their owners.