AI search API price index 2026: what 1,000 searches with page content cost at 14 APIs

How was the index built?

Every figure was taken from a provider's own pricing or documentation page on 2026-10-22; the list of pages closes this report. Prices are in US dollars, before tax.

• One unit for everyone. A "search with 3 pages" is one query returning at least 5 ranked results, with the complete text of the first 3 pages. When a provider sells search and page fetching separately, both calls are added up.
• Three volumes. For 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 searches a month we took the least expensive self-serve way to buy them: a plan, a plan plus its published overage or top-up rate, or pay as you go. A monthly plan larger than the need still counts at its full price.
• Excerpts are not pages. Brave's LLM Context and Perplexity's snippets return extracts sized for a prompt, not whole pages; they are listed but left out of the page columns.
• Token-billed APIs show a floor. Jina bills each search from 10,000 tokens; we show that minimum and keep it out of the medians.
• Free tiers are described, not priced, and LLMWebSearch is not counted in any median.

Why do prices differ so much?

Three choices explain most of the gap.

1. Who reads the pages. Some APIs return excerpts from their own index and stop there. Others fetch each page live, which costs them a request, a parser and often a browser. Adding page text moves a $1 search to $2.50 or more at most providers.
2. How pages are billed. Exa and Valyu include the text in the search price; Parallel, Linkup, Desearch, DeepSeek and Kagi bill each fetched page on top; Firecrawl bills credits per result and per page.
3. Plans versus prepaid. Tavily and Firecrawl sell monthly plans whose credits reset, so a team that buys a plan larger than its usage pays for the gap. Flat prepaid prices are the same at 10,000 and at 1 million searches.

At 100,000 searches a month, the lowest flat prices with 3 pages were Desearch ($2.50), Valyu ($2.99), DeepSeek Search + Fetch ($3.00).

What are the main findings?

• Page text costs extra at most providers. Once 3 pages are fetched, Parallel goes from $1.00 to $4.00 per 1,000, Desearch from $1.00 to $2.50 and DeepSeek from $0.75 to $3.00; Exa and Valyu include the text in their search price.
• Flat beats plans for uneven use. Exa, Parallel, Linkup, Desearch and DeepSeek charge the same at every volume; Tavily's per-search price moves with the plan you pick.
• Per-request crypto is common, prepaid crypto is not. Tavily, Exa, Parallel, Linkup, You.com accept USDC per request through x402 or MPP. None of them sells a prepaid account funded in crypto.
• Cards are the usual gate. Parallel, Linkup, Desearch, Kagi Search API, Brave Search API, Perplexity Search API ask for a card, a payment method or a work email before their free or paid tier. No AI search API in the index states a formal identity check.
• Excerpts are cheaper but shorter. Brave Search API and Perplexity Search API return extracts sized for a prompt; agents that need whole pages pair them with a reader.
• Built-in tools cost more per call. OpenAI and Anthropic charge $10 per 1,000, Gemini 3 and Bing grounding $14, before the tokens of the text they retrieve.

Can I reuse this data?

Yes, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0): copy, chart or adapt the tables with a link to this page and the check date, 2026-10-22. We plan to read the prices again every month.

Spotted a wrong figure? Send the page that shows the right one to [email protected]. We correct the table and record the change in the changelog.