---
source_url: "https://proxyway.com/research/search-apis-2026-report?utm_source=openai"
title: "Search APIs in 2026: Overview & Benchmarks - Proxyway"
mirrored_at: 2026-08-19T13:03:09.892Z
host: proxyway.com
cited_in_42a: true
mirror_canonical: "https://index.42a.ai/proxyway.com/research/search-apis-2026-report__q__utm_source_openai"
---

> **Original source:** https://proxyway.com/research/search-apis-2026-report?utm_source=openai

In 2025, the Silicon Valley hivemind converged around a new use case – AI agents. It shifted SERP APIs even further away from their conceptual roots. **Their main purpose became to rebuild web search for a new consumer, which was no longer human but rather AI.** In other words, companies stopped wanting to work within a search engine – instead, they hoped to replace existing search interfaces with their own (not without consequences, but more on that later).

While search APIs were making headlines, **another product category quietly sprung up, the so-called _fast_ or _light_ SERP APIs.** They sacrifice most unnecessary page elements in exchange for pure speed, often reaching less than a second per response. The original and most successful fast SERP API has been Serper; established providers like Oxylabs, Bright Data, and SerpApi have since introduced fast versions of their own.

While SerpApi and Google are fighting it out in the court, the legal teams of other providers watch closely, while their engineers shovel coal into the web scraping engine as fast as they can. Such is the price of opportunity.

 

**Full APIs**

**Fast APIs**

**Indices**

**Output**

All SERP elements, local search, ads

Crucial SERP elements (organic search, news)

Listed + extracted relevant pages

**Retrieval**

Real-time or very recent

Real-time or very recent

Index first, real-time as a fallback

**Representation of the SERP**

Faithful

Faithful

Unfaithful

**Primary user**

Human

AI, then human

AI

**Use cases**

Marketing agencies, SEO tools

Real-time data needs, RAG, deep research

RAG, deep research, AI agents

**Strengths**

Full SERP coverage, fresh output

Very fast, inexpensive, fresh output

Fastest, pre-processed output for AI

**Weaknesses**

Slow, limited suitability for AI

Limited SERP coverage, needs other tools for search & extract functionality

Limited SERP coverage, potentially stale data, expensive

Demand for search engine APIs is booming, and the market reflects that in the number of competitors. While we couldn’t list every one of them (most notably, the list misses Firecrawl and Parallel), **we bought and benchmarked 15 services covering all three scraper types.** Many were founded within the last few years.

 

**Full API**

**Fast API**

**Index**

**Brave**

❌

❌

✅

**Bright Data**

✅

✅

❌

**DataForSEO**

✅

❌

❌

**Exa**

❌

❌

✅ (+live retrieval)

**Jina**

❌

❌

✅ (+live retrieval)

**LinkUp**

❌

❌

✅

**Oxylabs**

✅

✅

❌

**Perplexity**

❌

❌

✅ 

**ScrapingBee**

✅

✅

❌

**Scrapingdog**

✅

✅

❌

**SearchApi**

✅

✅

❌

**SerpApi**

✅

✅

❌

**Serper**

❌

✅

❌

**Tavily**

❌

❌

✅ (+live retrieval)

**You**

❌

❌

✅ (+live retrieval)

 

**Model**

**Starting CPM**

**$1,000 CPM**

**Modifiers**

**Trial results**

**Brave**

PAYG

$3

$3

Usage conditions

2,000/mo

**Bright Data**

PAYG, sub

$1.5 (+$1.5 for extraction)

$1.1 (+$1.1 for extraction)

Premium domains (x2)

1,000

**DataForSEO**

PAYG

$0.6

$0.6 

Faster queue, live (x2, x3.3) 

1,000

**Exa**

PAYG

$5

$5

Search depth (x3)

670-2,000

**LinkUp**

PAYG

$5

$5

Search depth (x10)

100-1,000

**Oxylabs (Regular API)**

Sub

$1 (+$1.15 for extraction)

$0.6 (+$0.75 for extraction)

JS rendering (x1.35)

2,000

**Perplexity**

PAYG

$5

$5

❌

¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

**ScrapingBee**

Sub

$1.96 (+$0.2 for extraction)

$0.71 (+$0.07 for extraction)

API type (x2), extraction difficulty (up to x75)

100

**Scrapingdog**

Sub

$1 (+$0.2 for extraction)

$0.25 (+$0.05 for extraction)

API type (x2), extraction difficulty (up to x25)

100-200

**SearchApi**

Sub

$4

$1.8

Response speed (x2)

100

**SerpApi**

Sub

$25

$7.25

Response speed (x2, x4)

250/mo

**Serper**

PAYG

$1 (+$1 for extraction)

$0.75 (+$0.75 for extraction)

❌

2,500

**Tavily**

PAYG, sub

$7.5

Custom

Search depth (x2)

62-125/mo

**You**

PAYG

$6.25

$6.25

\# of results (x1.28)

12.5-16k

**Let’s try graphing the price per 1,000 search & extract requests**. This will better reflect the scaling – but be aware that we’re not taking into account any modifiers. 

**Real-time APIs nearly always come out cheaper.** However, they require more work to achieve the same results as an index.

Thanks for reading our report! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out through info at proxyway dot com or our [Discord server](https://discord.com/invite/Er8TUfE).