Web search API with the largest free tier
Exa has the largest free tier of the search APIs here at roughly 20000 requests per month, ahead of Linkup (about 4000) and Brave or Tavily (about 1000). Free-tier units differ across providers — monthly credits, requests and queries are not identical — so these are approximate equivalents, not like-for-like. A light estimate from provider pricing pages, June 2026.
DefaultExafree_tierExa
Provider offerings
| Offering | Price ($/1000 queries) | Relevance | Latency | Free/mo | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brave Search API (Data for AI)Brave Software | 5 | 14.89 | 669 ms | 1000 | — |
| ExaExa Labs | 7 | 14.39 | 1200 ms | 20000 | LLM-ready |
| Tavily Search APITavily (acquired by Nebius, Feb 2026) | 8 | 13.67 | 998 ms | 1000 | LLM-ready |
| LinkupLinkup | 5 | — | — | 4000 | LLM-ready |
| Perplexity Sonar / Search APIPerplexity AI | 5* | 12.96 | 11000 ms | — | LLM-ready |
| SerpAPI (Google SERP API)SerpApi LLC | 25* | 12.28 | 2400 ms | 250 | — |
* token-/credit-priced — the headline understates real per-unit cost, so it is excluded from the cheapest ranking.
Sources
- Brave Search API — Pricing (provider docs)2026-06-22
- Exa — API Pricing (provider docs)2026-06-22
- Tavily — Credits & Pricing (provider docs)2026-06-22
- Linkup — Pricing (provider docs)2026-06-22
- Perplexity — API Pricing (provider docs)2026-06-22
- SerpApi — Plans and Pricing (provider docs)2026-06-22
- AImultiple — Agentic Search: Benchmark 8 Search APIs for Agents (independent eval, updated 2026-05-25)2026-06-22
- Nebius announces agreement to acquire Tavily2026-02-10