China's web-search APIs start at ¥12 per 1,000 calls — five documented mainstream options, not just Baidu scrapers

Asked:

“Could you compile a table of overview of comparison of web-search api providers?”

Asked (follow-up):

“How about players in China?”

China-market edition of the earlier global comparison of 11 USD-priced providers, researched 6 September 2026 — the global framing stands; this page adds the domestic lane. The main shortlist covers 5 independently identifiable China API vendors or groups with current official product pages — Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Baidu, Moonshot/Kimi and Bocha — plus 2 watchlist leads (MetaSo/Mita, Skywork/Kunlun) whose current official pricing or access could not be verified. Prices are in RMB per 1,000 calls unless noted; each row links its own official domain, and no single URL backs more than half the rows.

The China comparison matrix

Source markers: official page current vendor domain · secondary source news coverage — verify before procurement. Left lane: standalone direct retrieval APIs. Right lane: model-bound tools and watchlist. Hover a card to focus it.

Listed RMB price per 1,000 calls, by tier

CNY per 1,000 calls, every published tier as a separate bar. Directional only — page-parsing depth, result counts, tokens and resource packs are not equivalent. Bocha and the two watchlist vendors expose no comparable official list price.

Findings

Cheapest documented entry point: Alibaba OpenSearch Lite at ¥12/1,000 under the billing change announced for 2026-08-31; Max adds deep page parsing at ¥46 — help.aliyun.com

Tencent Cloud spans the widest tier range (¥18–¥80/1,000) and sells annual packs from ¥1,998 per 50k calls up to ¥5.1M per 150M calls — but Premium and Flagship are enterprise-only — cloud.tencent.com

Baidu is the only shortlist provider with a stated daily free allowance — 100 calls/day — but caps accounts at 1–3 QPS and 100,000 calls/day absent an increase — ai.baidu.com

Moonshot/Kimi's ¥0.03 tool call is not the whole cost: retrieved search text also bills as prompt tokens, so it belongs in the model-bound lane, not the direct-API lane — platform.kimi.com

Buyer guidance

Graded retrieval depth on Alibaba Cloud, cheapest entry — Alibaba OpenSearch AI Search

Low latency (~300 ms) and huge index at enterprise volume — Tencent Cloud Web Search API

Baidu-index and multimodal (web/video/image/Aladdin) results — Baidu Search

AI-native semantic search independent of the big clouds — Bocha

Grounding inside Kimi model calls, no separate vendor — Moonshot/Kimi web search

Track, do not buy yet — MetaSo/Mita and Skywork/Kunlun (unverified terms)

Detailed table

Provider / product	Type	Public price	Free allowance	Returned content	Notable strengths	Limits / access	Best suited for	Source

China-market caveat: account real-name verification, Mainland region availability, ICP/content compliance, cross-border connectivity, data residency, invoicing (fapiao), censorship and content availability, procurement terms and QPS expansion can all materially affect suitability. Pricing is directional because calls, credits, page parsing, model tokens, result depth and resource packages are not equivalent. Test the same Chinese and international query set on each candidate before deciding.

China-market extension of the web-search API comparison: 9 consolidated candidate rows reduced to a 5-vendor priced shortlist plus 2 secondary-source watchlist leads, researched 2026-09-06 from multiple independent official domains. Sogou rows are treated as technical provenance of Tencent Cloud's product, not a separate vendor; one mis-normalized Baidu URL was replaced with Baidu's official page. Prices are listed CNY per call or per 1,000 calls, not negotiated rates; evidence excerpts and annual-pack detail were cut for space.

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