AI-agent web search starts at $1 per 1,000 requests — and eight of ten providers run their own index

Asked:

“Which web search APIs are built for AI agents? For each list the API, the company, the price per 1,000 requests and whether it runs its own web index.”

Ten leading web-search APIs explicitly documented for AI agents, LLM apps, RAG or model grounding, curated from 28 candidate product rows gathered off official provider pages (duplicate agent, deep-research and model variants omitted). Prices are public USD list prices per 1,000 API search requests observed on 2026-09-30. This is a curated market comparison, not a claim that no other AI-capable search API exists.

Price per 1,000 requests, cheapest entry mode first

entry mode price standard / higher mode price Own index Partial Unknown

Parallel Search Turbo/Fast and Perplexity Fast are the cheapest entry modes at $1 per 1,000 requests — 14× less than Google grounding for Gemini 3. docs.parallel.ai · docs.perplexity.ai

Eight of the ten explicitly run their own web index; Firecrawl is Partial — it has a growing index but its docs also describe upstream search for general results. docs.firecrawl.dev

OpenAI's index provenance is not publicly established in official material, and its $10/1K web-search fee adds search content tokens billed at model rates. developers.openai.com

Headline rates hide the spread inside one product: Linkup jumps from $5 standard to $50 deep search, and Google's grounding is $14 on Gemini 3 but $35 on Gemini 2.5/2.0. linkup.so · ai.google.dev

All ten APIs, with caveats and sources

API	Company	Price per 1,000 requests	Own web index	Caveat	Source

Method: 10 canonical web-search APIs selected from 28 candidate rows assembled from official provider pages; duplicate agent, deep-research, answer and model variants omitted. Prices are public USD list prices observed on 2026-09-30. “Per request” means one API search call or invocation, not one returned result. Model, token and content-extraction charges may be extra; Firecrawl's rate is derived from its credit bundles (2 credits per 10 results, lowest paid monthly plan) and has no standard mode shown; free allowances are excluded from headline rates. Full mode lists and result limits are condensed for space — see linked sources.

This report was generated automatically by Keenable SELECT at a user's request, from publicly available web sources linked herein. Keenable does not review, verify, or endorse its contents and makes no representation as to accuracy, completeness, or timeliness; AI-based extraction may contain errors. Nothing in this report is investment, legal, financial, or other professional advice. All trademarks and referenced content remain the property of their respective owners; no affiliation or endorsement is implied. To report an error, rights concern, or request removal: legal@keenable.ai.