Most "cheapest search API" posts compare monthly plans, but agents are billed per call. This post compares the published per-call prices of web search and extraction APIs that developers use with AI agents.
How we did this. We checked every price on October 2, 2026 on the vendor's own public pricing page, linked in each row. We only list a per-call price where the vendor states one. Plan-only and token-based pricing gets its own section, with the arithmetic shown. We don't compare result quality, latency or uptime. Prices change often, so check the source before you decide.
Disclosure: AgentSearch publishes this blog.
The short answer
-
Lowest stated price per search request: Exa Search (
instant), at $4 per 1,000 requests ($0.004). - $0.005 per request: AgentSearch Web Search.
- Lowest stated price per page extracted: Exa Contents, at $1 per 1,000 pages ($0.001).
- The only option here with no account, no API key and no prepaid credits: AgentSearch, which you pay per call in USDC over x402 or MPP.
AgentSearch is not the cheapest on sticker price for every operation, and we're not going to claim it is. Where it does well is the cost of getting started and of paying as you go: nothing to sign up for, no plan, no card, no balance to top up. An agent with a wallet can pay $0.005 for one call and stop there.
Search APIs: stated per-call prices
| Provider | Operation | Stated price | Per call | Account / key required | Source (checked 2026-10-02) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exa |
/search instant (up to 10 results) |
$4 / 1k requests | $0.004 | Yes (API key; $10 free credits monthly) | exa.ai/pricing |
| Exa |
/search fast / auto (up to 10 results) |
$7 / 1k requests | $0.007 | Yes | exa.ai/pricing |
| AgentSearch | Web Search (agentsearch-web-search-v1, up to 5 results) |
$0.005 / call | $0.005 | No account, no API key (USDC via x402 or MPP) | Agentic Portal: search |
Watch for what a call includes
- Exa's base price covers up to 10 results per request. Results above 10 and AI page summaries are billed extra; see its pricing page.
- AgentSearch Web Search returns up to 5 results per call (
max_results1–5), each with title, URL, snippet, score, domain and date. The fields are in the search spec.
Extraction APIs: stated per-page prices
| Provider | Operation | Stated price | Per page | Source (checked 2026-10-02) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exa |
/contents (per content type) |
$1 / 1k pages | $0.001 | exa.ai/pricing |
| AgentSearch | Web Extract (agentsearch-web-extract-v1) |
$0.005 / call | $0.005 | Agentic Portal: extract |
On per-page price alone, AgentSearch Extract costs more than Exa Contents. What you get for $0.005 is one URL turned into markdown or text, with the title, links and fetch metadata, and no account or prepaid balance. If you extract millions of pages a month, a bulk plan will cost you less.
Plan-based and token-based pricing (no stated per-call price)
These vendors don't publish a single per-call price, so they're left out of the tables above. The effective prices below are our arithmetic from their published plans, and they assume you use the whole monthly quota.
- SerpAPI (serpapi.com/pricing): monthly plans. Starter is $25 a month for 1,000 searches (≈$0.025 per search if you use all of them). The free plan includes 250 searches a month.
- Firecrawl (firecrawl.dev/pricing): credits. Hobby is $19 a month for 5,000 credits billed monthly, which the page equates to 2,500 searches (≈$0.0076 per search) or 5,000 scraped pages (≈$0.0038 per page).
-
Jina Reader (jina.ai/reader): billed by tokens, not requests. Search (
s.jina.ai) costs "a fixed number of tokens, starting from 10,000 tokens" per request. The page doesn't state a per-request dollar price, so we can't compare it directly.
The real cost for an agent: a worked example
Take a research agent that runs one search and reads the top 2 pages on each task, 1,000 times a month. Using the stated prices above:
| Approach | Calls per task | Cost per 1,000 tasks |
|---|---|---|
| AgentSearch search + 2 extracts | 3 calls | $15.00 |
Exa instant search + 2 Contents pages |
1 search + 2 pages | $4.00 + $2.00 = $6.00 |
Exa also gives $10 of free credits a month, which can bring a small workload down to $0. At small scale, free tiers can matter more than the per-call price; at any scale, AgentSearch needs no signup, plan or prepaid balance.
So what's the cheapest web search API for AI agents?
It depends on what you're optimizing for:
-
Lowest sticker price per search at volume: Exa
instant($0.004) on the pages we checked. - Lowest per-page extraction price: Exa Contents ($0.001).
- Lowest cost to start, with no commitment: AgentSearch. There's no account, API key, subscription or minimum. You pay $0.005 per search or extract call in USDC, over x402 on Base or MPP on Tempo. For an autonomous agent that holds its own wallet, that means there's no human signup step.
Try AgentSearch
In an MCP client, add npx -y @pocket-network/agentic-portal-mcp and set a spending cap. The MCP setup guide walks through it. From code, any standard x402 v2 client works:
import { wrapFetchWithPaymentFromConfig } from "@x402/fetch";
import { ExactEvmScheme } from "@x402/evm";
import { privateKeyToAccount } from "viem/accounts";
const account = privateKeyToAccount(process.env.AGENT_WALLET_KEY as `0x${string}`);
const pay = wrapFetchWithPaymentFromConfig(fetch, {
schemes: [{ network: "eip155:8453", client: new ExactEvmScheme(account) }],
});
const res = await pay(
"https://agent.pocket.network/v1/agentsearch-web-search-v1/v1/search",
{
method: "POST",
headers: { "content-type": "application/json" },
body: JSON.stringify({ query: "x402 v2 PAYMENT-SIGNATURE header", max_results: 5 }),
},
);
const { portal, data } = await res.json();
console.log(portal.serviceId, data.results?.map((r: any) => r.url));
If delivery fails, the portal settles nothing, so you aren't charged for it.
The full walkthrough is in How to give your AI agent web search with MCP. Extraction is covered in Turn any URL into clean markdown for RAG. Service details: search, extract.
Sources (all checked 2026-10-02)
- AgentSearch Web Search: https://agent.pocket.network/services/agentsearch-web-search-v1
- AgentSearch Web Extract: https://agent.pocket.network/services/agentsearch-web-extract-v1
- Exa: https://exa.ai/pricing
- SerpAPI: https://serpapi.com/pricing
- Firecrawl: https://www.firecrawl.dev/pricing
- Jina Reader: https://jina.ai/reader/
Spotted a price that has changed? Tell us and we'll update the table and the "checked" date.
More from the blog
- Add Web Search to Your AI Agent with MCP (2026 Guide)
- Turn Any URL into Clean Markdown for RAG (API Guide)
Service pages: Web Search API · Web Extract API · Web Render API
Originally published at agentsearchhq.com.
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