AI Tools
What does a web search API cost for AI agents in 2026?
A web search API for AI agents now costs between $0.25 and $8 per 1,000 requests, and Cloudflare's new Web Search API sits at the cheap end. It entered open beta on 2 October 2026 and resells three providers at list price with no markup: Ceramic.ai at $0.25 per 1,000, Linkup at $5.00 and Exa at $7.00.
What matters
- Cloudflare's Web Search API is in open beta as of 2 October 2026 and lives inside AI Gateway, billing every search at the provider's list price with no additional markup.
- Cloudflare's provider page prices a search at $0.25 per 1,000 requests on Ceramic.ai, $5.00 on Linkup and $7.00 on Exa.
- Direct pricing runs higher on some routes: Tavily charges $0.008 per credit and one basic search costs one credit, so $8 per 1,000 requests, against $5 per 1,000 on Brave's Search endpoint.
- Zero Data Retention is listed as Yes for Ceramic.ai and Linkup and No for Exa on Cloudflare's provider page, although the launch post says all three support it through Cloudflare.
- Linkup publishes 4,000 free queries on its own pricing page, and Brave applies $5 in free credits every month.
What is the Cloudflare Web Search API?
Cloudflare Web Search API is a single endpoint that lets an AI agent run a live web search and hand the results to a model, without wiring up a provider SDK first. It entered open beta on 2 October 2026 and runs inside Cloudflare's AI Gateway, so search calls appear in the same logs and analytics as your model inference requests.
You choose the engine at request time with a provider parameter. At launch Cloudflare supports three: Ceramic.ai, which is the default, Exa, and Linkup. Cloudflare says it calls Exa's auto search type and Linkup's fast search depth, and that Ceramic.ai returns page descriptions of up to 8,000 characters, which is a large amount of context to hand a retrieval step.
The exact per-provider behaviour and prices are on Cloudflare's provider page, and every number in the table below was read from that page or the vendor's own pricing page on 6 October 2026.
Web search API prices, verified 6 October 2026
Cloudflare does not add a search fee of its own. Each request is billed through AI Gateway credits at the provider's list price, and the three providers it carries are priced very differently. The two large search APIs Cloudflare does not carry yet, Brave and Tavily, publish their own meters.
Read the units carefully, because the headline numbers are not all per-1,000-request figures. Tavily prices per credit, and a basic search costs one credit. Linkup prices per request on its own site. Brave prices per 1,000 requests for both Search and its summarized Answers endpoint.
The spread between the cheapest and most expensive route on this page is 32 times. That is not a typo and it is the single most useful number in this article.
Does routing through Cloudflare save you money?
No. Cloudflare passes searches through at list price with no additional markup, so a search costs the same whether it goes through AI Gateway or straight to the provider. The trade is operational: unified billing for search and model spend, and one dashboard instead of three vendor accounts.
There is one route where going direct can be cheaper. Cloudflare bills Exa at $7.00 per 1,000 requests for the auto search type, while Exa's own pricing page advertises Search from $4 per 1,000 requests. Cloudflare is quoting Exa's rate for the mode it selected, so if your workload suits a cheaper Exa mode, calling Exa directly beats the passthrough.
Bring-your-own-key is the second lever. Supply your own provider key and the provider bills you under your existing agreement, which matters if you have already negotiated volume pricing or committed spend.
Zero Data Retention: the detail that decides regulated workloads
Agents often touch user data, so retention policy decides whether a search provider is usable at all. Cloudflare's provider page lists Zero Data Retention as Yes for Ceramic.ai and Linkup and No for Exa. That sits awkwardly next to the launch post, which states that all three providers support Zero Data Retention for requests made through Cloudflare. Treat the provider table as current for Exa routes until Cloudflare or Exa clarifies which one applies.
The launch post carries a second commitment that never appears in a pricing table: all three providers have committed to Cloudflare's verified bot crawling standards. For anyone pulling page content into a product, that is a legal and reputational difference rather than a technical one.
Which web search API should you pick?
Match the engine to the job instead of to the headline price.
- Highest volume on the smallest budget: Ceramic.ai through Cloudflare at $0.25 per 1,000 requests. Ceramic.ai says it runs its own index of more than 40 billion pages built for agents rather than human search, and Cloudflare makes it the default, so it is the cheapest way to ground a lot of chatbot answers in live pages.
- Regulated data and cited snippets: Linkup. It carries Zero Data Retention on Cloudflare's table and returns sourced text snippets without generating an answer, at $5.00 per 1,000 requests through Cloudflare, or $0.005 to $0.006 per request direct.
- Semantic search and query-relevant excerpts: Exa, which blends keyword and embeddings search and returns highlights as the result description. Search starts at $4 per 1,000 requests direct, but the auto mode Cloudflare routes to is billed at $7.00 per 1,000, and its retention column says No.
- An independent index plus monthly free credits: Brave Search API at $5 per 1,000 requests, with $5 in credits applied every month. Brave also sells a summarized Answers endpoint at $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input and output tokens.
- Answers rather than links: Tavily bills one credit per basic search and two for advanced, at $0.008 per credit, which is $8 per 1,000 basic searches. Its free plan includes 1,000 credits a month.
The honest catch: beta, no markup, and a 32x price spread
Three things are worth weighing before you rewrite a retrieval layer around any of this.
- It is open beta. Cloudflare shipped Web Search API on 2 October 2026 with three providers, and the docs still carry a beta label. Beta pricing and provider lists move.
- The cheapest route is 32 times cheaper, which is a warning as much as a bargain. At $0.25 per 1,000 requests Ceramic.ai undercuts Tavily's $8 by a factor of 32. A ten-search agent task costs about $0.0025 on Ceramic.ai against roughly $0.08 on Tavily. A gap that size usually signals a smaller index or fewer controls, so test recall on your own queries before switching rather than trusting the price list.
- You still own the failure mode. Cloudflare logs the calls and bills the credits, but a provider outage or a stale index is your problem, not the gateway's. Pin a fallback provider in your code.
At a glance
| Search API | Price per 1,000 requests | Free tier | Zero Data Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Web Search API: Ceramic.ai (default) | $0.25 via AI Gateway credits | Not stated | Yes |
| Cloudflare Web Search API: Linkup | $5.00 via AI Gateway credits | Not stated | Yes |
| Cloudflare Web Search API: Exa | $7.00 via AI Gateway credits | Not stated | No |
| Brave Search API | $5 (Search endpoint) | $5 credits per month, plan requires a card | Not stated |
| Tavily | $8 (one credit per basic search at $0.008) | 1,000 credits per month | Not stated |
| Exa (direct) | From $4 (Search endpoint) | $10 credits per month plus $10 onboarding | Not stated |
| Linkup (direct) | $5 to $6 ($0.005 to $0.006 per request) | 4,000 free queries | Listed on Linkup's site |
FAQ
Is the Cloudflare Web Search API free?
No. Cloudflare bills each search through AI Gateway credits at the provider's list API price with no additional markup, so the cheapest supported provider, Ceramic.ai, runs $0.25 per 1,000 requests. You can also bring your own provider key, in which case the provider bills you directly under your own agreement.
Is Brave Search API cheaper than Tavily?
Yes, at list price. Brave charges $5 per 1,000 requests on its Search endpoint and applies $5 in free credits every month. Tavily charges $0.008 per credit with one credit per basic search, which is $8 per 1,000 requests, and its free plan includes 1,000 credits per month.
Which web search API supports Zero Data Retention?
On Cloudflare's provider page, Ceramic.ai and Linkup are listed with Zero Data Retention as Yes and Exa as No. Cloudflare's own launch post says all three providers support Zero Data Retention for requests made through Cloudflare, so confirm the Exa position with the vendor before routing sensitive data there.
Related reading
cheapest LLM API rates, AI agent platform pricing, best VPS for AI agents, the ToolBistro Radar index, What Does Cloudflare AI Gateway Cost in 2026?, What is OpenRouter Fusion, and is it worth the cost?