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Merit-only ranking · 11 providers · one corpus

Cheapest Search API for AI

The lowest cost-per-useful-result web-search APIs, measured — because for high-volume agents, price per successful query is what actually moves the bill.

Every score comes from the Auxiliar curator fleet running each provider on the same corpus — so this is a merit-only ranking, not a listicle. Jina takes the top spot (cost $0.00033 / useful result, $0.00033 / useful result). Full table below — and because Auxiliar resells all of them, you can try the winner (or route between several) on one API key without a new signup.

The ranking

Ranked by measured cost. Each row links to the provider's full scorecard.

1 JinaTop pick You want clean LLM-ready markdown from a URL or a search-plus-read in a single call. 7.69/10 Cost $0.00033 / useful result $0.00033 / useful result 2 Serper You want the cheapest, fastest Google grounding and will synthesize results yourself. 7.24/10 Cost $0.00053 / useful result $0.00053 / useful result 3 DataForSEO You need bulk async SERP scraping, webhooks, and the deepest SERP-feature taxonomy. 5.86/10 Cost $0.0034 / useful result $0.0034 / useful result 4 Parallel You want the lowest-friction in-loop option — a no-key Search MCP and sub-second P50. 6.76/10 Cost $0.0062 / useful result $0.0062 / useful result 5 SearchAPI.io You want SerpApi-compatible JSON at a lower price, with pay-per-success billing. 6.44/10 Cost $0.007 / useful result $0.007 / useful result 6 You.com You want an independent index with soft domain-boosting and a cited Research API. 7.41/10 Cost $0.0077 / useful result $0.0077 / useful result 7 Brave Search You want an index that isn't a Google/Bing scrape, plus a privacy posture and AI grounding. 6.99/10 Cost $0.0078 / useful result $0.0078 / useful result 8 Linkup You want a compliant SERP alternative with a built-in sourced answer and structured JSON. 5.47/10 Cost $0.013 / useful result $0.013 / useful result 9 Exa You want semantic discovery, 'find similar', research, or a built-in /answer endpoint. 6.7/10 Cost $0.014 / useful result $0.014 / useful result 10 Tavily You want the agent/RAG default that returns a relevance score and optional answer in one call. 6.66/10 Cost $0.014 / useful result $0.014 / useful result 11 SerpApi You're compliance-sensitive, need multi-engine breadth, or want the drop-in LangChain default. 6.1/10 Cost $0.015 / useful result $0.015 / useful result

One key. Every provider on this page.

Stop juggling signups and invoices. One Auxiliar API key calls all of them — upstream keys injected server-side, usage billed to a single balance. Swap the base URL and go.

curl https://api.auxiliar.ai/serper/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AUXILIAR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q": "latest ai agent news"}'
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