Affordable web search API for AI agents in 2026

By AgentSearch · October 2, 2026

Most search API price comparisons look at 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

• Exa Search (instant): $4 per 1,000 requests ($0.004 per request), with an API key.
• AgentSearch Web Search: $0.005 per request, with no API key, no signup, and no subscription or minimums. You pay per call through the Pocket Agentic Portal.
• Exa Contents: $1 per 1,000 pages ($0.001 per page).
• 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.

On sticker price, some providers charge less per call than AgentSearch, and we're not going to claim otherwise. What AgentSearch offers is a simple way to get started and pay as you go: no signup, no API key, no plan, no card, no balance to top up. An agent with a wallet can pay $0.005 for one call through the Pocket Agentic Portal and stop there.

Search APIs: stated per-call prices

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_results 1–5), each with title, URL, snippet, score, domain and date. The fields are in the search spec.

Extraction APIs: stated per-page prices

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.

Pages that need JavaScript: AgentSearch Web Render

Extraction from HTML works when the content is in the HTML the server sends. Single-page apps and client-side hydrated pages don't work that way: a plain fetch comes back empty or returns a JavaScript shell. For those pages, AgentSearch runs Web Render. It loads the page in a real browser, lets the scripts run, then returns the rendered content. Render costs $0.005 per call on the Pocket Agentic Portal (agentsearch-web-render-v1), paid in USDC with no account or API key (price checked October 5, 2026). It isn't in the tables above, which compare search and extraction APIs. In practice, an agent extracts first and falls back to Render only when Extract comes back empty or returns a shell, so you only render the pages that need it. That keeps search, extract and render with one provider.

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:

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.

Which web search API fits your agent?

It depends on what you're optimizing for:

1. If you run high search volumes: Exa instant lists $0.004 per request on the pages we checked, with an API key.
2. If you extract pages in bulk: Exa Contents lists $0.001 per page.
3. If you want to start with no commitment: AgentSearch costs $0.005 per search or extract call, with no API key, no signup, and no subscription or minimums. You pay per call in USDC through the Pocket Agentic Portal, 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 and, for JavaScript-heavy pages, render.

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