Best search APIs for AI agents, ordered by what a query returns

Price per query is the easy number to compare. What comes back for that price matters more, because it sets how much work your agent still has to do after the search. This list covers five web search APIs an agent can call: Exa, Brave, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Cloudflare, and Google results through Serper. They are ordered by what a result holds, with page text first, then snippets, then links with a line of description.

Prices are each provider's own, and each linked price page shows the current rate. We also sent one query to three of these APIs, paying per call through Zero, ZeroClick's own payment layer for agents. Only one of them put the protocol's specification first.

Exa

Exa is the one API here that can return the page with the link. Its listing says each result can carry the full page text, extracted highlights or an AI summary alongside the title and URL.

Search costs $7 per 1,000 requests on Auto and $4 on Lite. That base price covers up to 10 results, and AI page summaries add $1 per 1,000 pages. The contents have to be requested: our call asked for five results and no contents, came back with titles and URLs only, and cost $0.007.

Brave Search API

Brave sells two shapes of result under one key. Its web search returns a results page built for people. Its LLM Context endpoint returns ranked, extracted text, tables and code, sized anywhere from about 1,000 to 33,000 tokens.

The Search plan, which Brave says includes that LLM context, costs $5 per 1,000 requests and comes with $5 in free credits a month. Brave asks for a card up front, which it says is to prevent abuse. Paid per call through a reseller route listed on Zero, the web search endpoint cost $0.035, seven times Brave's own list rate.

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Web Search

AWS's tool returns snippets rather than whole pages. According to its launch post, the agent sends a natural-language query and gets back the most relevant snippets, source URLs, titles and publication dates. These come from Amazon's own index and knowledge graph, with zero data egress from the customer's AWS environment.

Search costs $7 per 1,000 queries. Because it runs through AgentCore Gateway, each tool call also incurs Gateway's $0.005 per 1,000 invocations. New AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits.

AgentCore suits a team that already runs its agents on AWS. Bedrock also has a server-side web search for OpenAI models in three US regions, priced on the Bedrock pricing page.

Cloudflare Web Search API

Cloudflare puts partners' search behind one endpoint in AI Gateway, so it is a front door rather than its own index. Results come back as titles, URLs and descriptions in the same format whatever the provider, so switching providers means changing one parameter. Searches show up in the same logs and access controls as model calls.

Cloudflare's launch post says searches are billed at each partner's list price with no markup and draw down from your AI Gateway credit balance, and you can bring your own provider key instead. Cloudflare's pricing page applies a 5% fee to all credits bought through Unified Billing.

Cloudflare suits a team already routing inference through AI Gateway.

Serper (Google results)

Serper returns a Google results page as JSON. Each organic result is a link with a title and a one-line snippet, and the response also includes the knowledge graph, People Also Ask and related searches.

Our call cost $0.002 and returned nine organic results, four People Also Ask questions and eight related searches.

Serper suits an agent that needs to know what Google ranks and will spend a second call fetching the page it picks.

One query, three APIs

We sent the same query, x402 HTTP 402 payment protocol specification, to three of the APIs and compared what each put first.

Only Exa put the specification itself at the top. Brave and Serper led with x402.org's home page, which the agent would still have to navigate from to reach the document.

That is one query, so it is not a ranking. It does show the cost the price column hides: every page the agent must open is another call, and every call has its own price.

How to choose

Start from what your agent does next with a result:

• If it reads sources, Exa and Brave's LLM Context save it the fetch.
• If it reasons over short evidence and lives on AWS, AgentCore keeps search under the same account and governance.
• If you already run AI Gateway, Cloudflare adds search without a new vendor.
• If you need Google's ordering, use Serper and budget for the fetch afterwards.

Then price the whole job, meaning the search plus any fetches it causes. Buying per call with no account cost Exa's list price but seven times Brave's, so a high-volume Brave user is better off with a key.

Expect the field to keep shifting. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025, and Brave's page says Google's Custom Search JSON API shuts down on January 1, 2027.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest web search API for an AI agent?

Of the prices in this list, Serper's Google results were the lowest, at $0.002 for our call. Among list prices, Exa's Lite search is $4 per 1,000 and Brave's Search plan is $5 per 1,000.

Can an agent use a search API without an API key?

Exa, Brave and Serper are each listed on Zero, ZeroClick's own payment layer for agents, at a price per call. We paid per call through Zero for all three, and each call returned results.

Which search APIs return full page text?

Exa can return full page text, highlights or summaries with each result, and Brave's LLM Context endpoint returns ranked, extracted page text. AgentCore returns snippets, and Cloudflare and Serper return links with short descriptions.

Exa vs Brave search API: which costs less?

At list price, Brave's Search plan is $5 per 1,000 requests, while Exa is $4 on Lite and $7 on Auto. Paid per call through Zero, Exa cost $0.007 and Brave cost $0.035.

Does Cloudflare charge extra for web search?

Cloudflare bills searches at each provider's list price with no markup, or you can bring your own provider key. Credits bought through its Unified Billing carry a 5% fee.