Best Bing Search API Alternatives in 2026: 8 Tools Compared

Last updated: October 27, 2026. We sent the same 58 questions through String's search API on Google, DuckDuckGo and Brave on October 27, 2026. We hold no key for the other six products, so they are described from their own pricing pages and docs, checked October 27, and marked Not tested. String publishes this page and sells a search API, so read our picks with that in mind.

What replaces the Bing Search API?

The best Bing Search API alternatives in 2026 are Grounding with Bing Search, String, Brave Search API, SerpApi, Serper, Tavily and Exa. This page puts those seven Bing Search API alternatives side by side. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025. Its own replacement, Grounding with Bing Search, costs $14 per 1,000 transactions and gives your code no raw results. String returns Google, DuckDuckGo or Brave results as JSON for $0.70 per 1,000 searches on Growth. Our October 27 test adds one buying fact: Google and DuckDuckGo, whose links come largely from Bing, shared a median of 1 of their top 10 domains.

TL;DR

• The Bing Search APIs are gone. Microsoft decommissioned every instance on August 11, 2025, and takes no new signups.
• Microsoft's replacement is a different product. Grounding with Bing Search feeds Bing results to an Azure AI agent at $14 per 1,000 transactions. Developers "don't have access to raw content" it returns.
• Six of the seven alternatives return a result list as JSON: String, Brave, SerpApi, Serper, Tavily and Exa. Grounding with Bing Search is the exception.
• Price at the plan nearest $100 a month runs from $0.70 per 1,000 (String Growth) to $15.00 (SerpApi Developer).
• Switching engines changes your sources. On October 27, Google and DuckDuckGo shared a median of 1 of their top 10 domains across 58 questions, and none at all on 15.
• A Bing response could carry 11 answer types. Google results come closest to that shape: on 58 questions, Google added related searches to 41 and videos to 22, while DuckDuckGo and Brave returned web results only.
• Google's Custom Search JSON API is closing too. It takes no new customers and ends January 1, 2027.

The Bing Search API and seven alternatives at a glance

The anchor is the plan nearest $100 a month billed monthly, by dollar distance. Where a vendor sells no monthly plan, the row uses its pay-as-you-go or top-up rate.

Prices come from each vendor's pricing page on October 27, 2026. Each one links to its source in the sections below.

Who String is for, and who it is not for

String fits a team that called Bing from its own code and wants raw search results back as JSON. One POST returns ranked results with title, URL, snippet and position. The same key fetches the pages behind them.

• For: agent and RAG builders who need the result list, not only a model's answer; teams leaving Bing v7 who also need images, videos, places or a knowledge panel; teams that buy search and scraping from two vendors today.
• Look elsewhere for: Bing's own index. If a contract or a model evaluation needs Bing results specifically, Grounding with Bing Search or SerpApi's Bing engine returns them.
• Price for this job: $0.70 per 1,000 searches on Growth ($99 a month) and $1.20 on Starter ($19). Blocked requests and errors on String's side are free. Source: usestring.ai/pricing.
• Integrations: a hosted MCP server for Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients, plus guides for LangChain and the Vercel AI SDK.
• Limits: 60 requests a second on paid plans with a 3,600-request burst (pricing docs). page, dateRange and sortBy work on Google only (search docs).

Have a list of queries you ran on Bing? Send them through /v1/search with a free key and compare the engines on your own traffic.

Why teams switch from Bing Search API

Microsoft shut it down. Its lifecycle notice reads: "Bing Search APIs will be retired on August 11, 2025. Any existing instances of Bing Search APIs will be decommissioned completely, and the product will no longer be available to be used or new customer signup" (Microsoft Lifecycle). The same notice tells customers to move to Grounding with Bing Search.

The replacement does a different job. Bing v7 was a GET request that returned results. Grounding with Bing Search is a tool an Azure AI agent calls, and Microsoft's docs say it "does NOT return the tool output to developers and end users" (Microsoft Learn).

Developers saw the gap before the shutdown. In April 2025 Steve (stevdnz) reported in Microsoft's own azurechat repo that the "v7 bing search resource can no longer be deployed to Azure as a new resource". He wrote that Grounding with Bing "will not work with the extension/tool of simply doing a GET request on the search API endpoint, instead requires an agent" (azurechat issue #514).

Projects had to rewire. In November 2025 a contributor to Open WebUI opened a discussion titled "Add Azure AI Search as a replacement for Bing", writing that "Bing Search is EOL" (open-webui discussion #19100).

The other official API is closing too. Google's Custom Search JSON API "is closed to new customers", and existing customers "have until January 1, 2027 to transition" (Google for Developers). On a Microsoft Q&A thread about Bing in March 2026, one user replied: "Google custom search API retire in january... need better alternative in terms of pricing" (Microsoft Q&A).

The reasons in these threads are the loss of a plain results API, a forced move into one cloud's agent framework, and price. Result quality rarely comes up.

How we tested

We tested String only, because it is the only API on this page we hold a key for. On October 27, 2026, between 12:16 and 12:17 UTC, we sent the same 58 buyer questions about web data and search APIs to String's /v1/search three times each: once with engine google, once with duckduckgo and once with brave. Every call used country US and language en, with no AI Overview fill.

All 174 calls answered: 58 of 58 on each engine. We recorded every result's URL, snippet and date, and every extra block each response carried. We compare domains (hostnames without www.) in each engine's top 10 results.

We chose DuckDuckGo because its help pages say its traditional links come "largely" from Bing (DuckDuckGo). DuckDuckGo is not Bing, and it also runs its own crawler. It is the closest view of Bing-style results we can measure today. Brave runs its own index.

This test measures what each engine returned on one day. It does not measure the other six products, so we do not rank them on quality or speed.

Switching engines changes your sources

Google and DuckDuckGo shared a median of 1 of their top 10 domains on 58 questions. On 15 questions they shared none. They put the same domain first on 5 of 58.

Across all three engines, the median question returned 18 distinct domains in the three top 10s. A median of 1 domain appeared in all three. On 23 of the 58 questions, no domain appeared in all three lists.

Why this matters when you replace Bing:

• Your agent will cite different pages. If your prompts, evaluations or customer answers were tuned on Bing results, expect most sources to change after a move to Google.
• Test before you switch the whole workload. Run a sample of your real queries on two engines and read which one returns the sources your users trust.
• Two engines can be better than one. DuckDuckGo and Brave never returned fully disjoint lists here, but Google and DuckDuckGo did on 15 questions. A second engine adds sources a single index misses.

You can run the same comparison on your own queries: one key, change engine, and diff the URLs. A free key covers a sample run.

What a Bing response carried, and where it maps now

A Bing Web Search v7 response could carry 11 answer types plus a suggested display order, from webPages and relatedSearches to computation and timeZone (Bing v7 response objects). Each web result also carried dateLastCrawled and deepLinks.

On our 58 questions, the Google responses carried related searches on 41, People also ask on 40, videos on 22 and discussions on 17. DuckDuckGo and Brave returned web results only. Brave returned a median of 20 results per call, DuckDuckGo 10 and Google 9.

A date came back on 213 of 482 Google results (44%), 364 of 579 DuckDuckGo results (63%) and 791 of 1,143 Brave results (69%). Bing's dateLastCrawled was a crawl date on every result. None of these is the same field, so check which date your code needs.

Grounding with Bing Search vs Bing Search API: Microsoft's own replacement, $14 per 1,000

Grounding with Bing Search costs $14 per 1,000 transactions, with a cap of 150 transactions a second and 1 million a day (Microsoft pricing). Not tested.

• Pricing. Pay as you go on Azure. Transactions are "counted by the number of tool calls per run." Only paid and pay-as-you-go Azure subscriptions qualify; free-credit subscriptions do not (Microsoft Learn).
• What it returns. An agent's answer with citations and a link to the Bing query. Microsoft's pricing page says outputs "are not directly accessible for use in other applications or programs."
• Strengths. Bing's index, from Microsoft. A Custom Search variant at the same price limits results to sites you choose.
• Weaknesses. No raw results. Both the citations and the Bing query link must be displayed. Queries leave the Azure compliance boundary, by Microsoft's own docs.

String vs Bing Search API: raw JSON on three engines, $0.70 per 1,000

String answered 58 of 58 questions on each of Google, DuckDuckGo and Brave on October 27, 2026. One endpoint, one key, and the engine is a request field.

• Pricing. $0.70 per 1,000 searches on Growth ($99 a month), $1.20 on Starter ($19), $0.50 on Scale ($499). A Google search with aiOverview: true costs 2x. Blocked requests and errors on String's side are free (pricing).
• What it returns. Ranked results with title, URL, snippet and position on every engine. Google adds the AI Overview, People also ask, related searches, videos, places, the knowledge panel and answer widgets, each in its own field. engine: "google_ai_mode" returns Google AI Mode's answer and the pages it cites (search docs).
• Strengths. Raw results your code owns. Engine choice per request. The same key fetches every result URL through /v1/fetch.
• Engines. Google, DuckDuckGo and Brave. DuckDuckGo is the closest engine for Bing-sourced links. Paging and date filters work on Google results.

Brave Search API vs Bing Search API: an independent index at $5 per 1,000

Brave sells search at $5 per 1,000 requests, up to 50 queries a second, with $5 in free credits every month (Brave Search API). Not tested.

• Pricing. Prepaid credits, no subscription. $100 buys 20,000 requests.
• What it returns. Web results from "Brave's independent Web index", plus extra snippets and schema data (Brave docs).
• Strengths. Its own index, with "zero dependencies on Google or Bing" in Brave's words. Goggles let you re-rank and filter results.
• Weaknesses. One index. In our test, Brave results (run through String) shared a median of 2 of their top 10 domains with Google's, so prompts tuned on Google will see different sources.

SerpApi vs Bing Search API: Bing's results page as JSON

SerpApi's Bing engine "allows you to scrape results from the Bing search page" at serpapi.com/search?engine=bing (SerpApi Bing API). Not tested.

• Pricing. Developer $75 a month for 5,000 searches, $15.00 per 1,000. Production $150 for 15,000. 250 free searches a month. "Only successful searches are counted" (SerpApi pricing).
• What it returns. Bing's organic results and its other blocks parsed to JSON, plus Google and many other engines on the same key.
• Strengths. The closest drop-in if your output must stay Bing-sourced.
• Weaknesses. The highest price per search on this page, and hourly throughput caps per plan (1,000 an hour on Developer).

Serper vs Bing Search API: Google results at $1.00 per 1,000

Serper sells 50,000 Google searches for $50, or $1.00 per 1,000, with credits valid for 6 months (Serper). Not tested.

• Pricing. Top-ups, no monthly plan. $375 buys 500,000 at $0.75 per 1,000. 2,500 free queries.
• What it returns. Parsed Google results.
• Strengths. A simple price and 50 queries a second on the $50 top-up.
• Weaknesses. Google only. Credits expire after 6 months.

Tavily vs Bing Search API: search shaped for an LLM

Tavily's Bootstrap plan costs $100 a month for 15,000 credits; a basic search costs 1 credit and an advanced search 2 (Tavily credits). Not tested.

• Pricing. $6.67 per 1,000 basic searches or $13.33 per 1,000 advanced on Bootstrap. Pay as you go at $0.008 a credit. 1,000 free credits a month, no card (Tavily pricing).
• What it returns. Results and page content prepared for an LLM, with options such as include_raw_content (Tavily search docs).
• Strengths. Built for RAG pipelines that want text, not a results page.
• Weaknesses. "If you exhaust your monthly credits, requests will stop" until reset or upgrade.

Exa vs Bing Search API: per-request pricing by search depth

Exa charges $4 per 1,000 Lite searches, $7 for Auto and $12 for Deep, each with up to 10 results (Exa pricing). Not tested.

• Pricing. Pay per request, no commitment. $1 per 1,000 for each extra result above 10. $10 in free credits every month.
• What it returns. Search results with optional page contents at $1 per 1,000 pages (Exa search docs).
• Strengths. Up to 25 search queries a second on pay as you go, and up to 1,000 results per search on Enterprise.
• Weaknesses. The price moves with search type and result count, so estimate per workload.

What $100 a month buys

• Grounding with Bing Search: about 7,100 transactions at $14 per 1,000.
• String: the $99 Growth plan, with searches at $0.70 per 1,000.
• Brave Search API: 20,000 requests at $5 per 1,000.
• SerpApi: Developer at $75 buys 5,000 searches; Production at $150 buys 15,000.
• Serper: 100,000 Google searches in two $50 top-ups.
• Tavily: Bootstrap at $100 buys 15,000 basic or 7,500 advanced searches.
• Exa: 25,000 Lite, about 14,300 Auto or about 8,300 Deep searches.

These numbers are not like for like. A Grounding transaction is a tool call inside an agent run, not a result list. Tavily and Exa price by depth. Serper credits expire. Read the billing rule beside each price before you compare.

How String replaces Bing search for your agent

String is the most reliable web scraping API, bypassing anti-bot, and you only pay when content comes back.

• One POST returns ranked results as JSON. Each result carries title, url, snippet and position; Bing's webPages carried name, url and snippet (search docs).
• The engine is one field. engine takes google, duckduckgo or brave; on October 27, 2026 String answered 58 of 58 questions on each.
• Google results bring Bing's extra answer types back. Related searches, videos, places, the knowledge panel, spelling and answer widgets each come back in their own field (API reference).
• Search costs $0.70 per 1,000 on Growth. That is the published rate on usestring.ai/pricing, against $14 per 1,000 for Grounding with Bing Search.
• Search and fetch share one key. Every result URL can be read through /v1/fetch on the same bill, so the agent reads the page, not just the snippet.
• Blocked requests and errors on String's side are free. The rule is printed on the pricing page.

Where String fits

String fits when your code needs the result list itself, on Google or a second engine, and then the pages behind it. If your workload must stay on Bing's index, use Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure, or SerpApi's Bing engine.

Which Bing Search API alternative should you pick?

Match the tool to the job.

• Bing results inside an Azure AI agent: Grounding with Bing Search.
• Raw results as JSON, engine choice per request, and page fetches on one key: String.
• An independent index with no Google or Bing dependency: Brave Search API.
• Bing's own results page as JSON: SerpApi.
• Plain Google results on top-up credits: Serper.
• Search text prepared for a RAG pipeline: Tavily.
• Per-request pricing by search depth: Exa.

For the wider field, including Perplexity, Firecrawl and Parallel, see the best web search APIs. If you need Google results specifically, the SerpApi alternatives page compares six Google results APIs. Not sure you need a search API at all? Read web search API vs scraping API.

If Bing fed an agent, the search API for AI agents guide covers query form and parallel calls, and keeping an LLM's knowledge current covers dated sources. To scrape Google yourself instead of buying an API, see how to scrape Google search results.

The same search in Bing v7 and String

The Bing call follows Microsoft's Python quickstart for Bing Web Search v7. It cannot run today, because the endpoint was retired.

Bing Web Search v7, Python (retired):

import os, requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search",
    headers={"Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key": os.environ["BING_SEARCH_V7_KEY"]},
    params={"q": "bing search api alternatives", "mkt": "en-US", "count": 10},
    timeout=60,
)
resp.raise_for_status()
for page in resp.json()["webPages"]["value"][:5]:
    print(page["name"], page["url"])

String, Python (ran October 27, 2026):

import os, requests

resp = requests.post(
    "https://request.usestring.ai/v1/search",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['STRING_API_KEY']}"},
    json={"query": "bing search api alternatives", "engine": "duckduckgo",
          "country": "US", "language": "en"},
    timeout=60,
)
resp.raise_for_status()
for r in resp.json()["results"][:5]:
    print(r["position"], r["title"], r["url"])

Four changes move a script across: GET becomes POST, the Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header becomes a Bearer token, q becomes query, and webPages.value[].name becomes results[].title. Swap "duckduckgo" for "google" or "brave" to change the engine.

String, TypeScript (ran October 27, 2026):

const res = await fetch("https://request.usestring.ai/v1/search", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.STRING_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ query: "bing search api alternatives", engine: "google", country: "US", language: "en" }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${res.status}`);
const data = await res.json();
for (const r of data.results.slice(0, 5)) console.log(r.position, r.title, r.url);
console.log("related:", (data.relatedSearches ?? []).slice(0, 3).join(" | "));

Or with curl:

curl https://request.usestring.ai/v1/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $STRING_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "query": "bing search api alternatives", "engine": "brave", "country": "US", "language": "en" }'

Get a key with $5 of free credit, no card, at portal.usestring.ai, and run your old Bing queries on all three engines.

FAQ

Is the Bing Search API deprecated?

Yes, and it is fully retired. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025, decommissioned every existing instance, and closed new signups. Its notice points customers to Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI agents.

What should replace Bing Search API for AI agents after retirement?

If your agent runs in Azure AI Foundry, Grounding with Bing Search keeps Bing's index at $14 per 1,000 transactions, without raw results. If your code needs the result list, use an API that returns JSON: String ($0.70 per 1,000 on Growth, Google, DuckDuckGo or Brave), Brave ($5), Serper ($1.00, Google only) or SerpApi ($15.00, with a Bing engine).

What are some Bing Search API alternatives?

Grounding with Bing Search, String, Brave Search API, SerpApi, Serper, Tavily and Exa. They differ on what they search, whether your code gets raw results, and price, which runs from $0.70 to $15.00 per 1,000 at the plan nearest $100 a month.

What is the best Bing web search API now?

For Bing's own index, Microsoft sells only Grounding with Bing Search, which works inside Azure agents. For Bing's results page as JSON, SerpApi has a Bing engine at $15.00 per 1,000. For a results API that does not depend on Bing, String and Brave return JSON at $0.70 and $5 per 1,000.

Is there a free Bing Search API alternative?

Every JSON alternative here has a free tier. Serper gives 2,500 queries, Tavily 1,000 credits a month, Exa $10 a month, Brave $5 a month, SerpApi 250 searches a month, and String $5 of credit with no card. Grounding with Bing Search has no free tier and needs a paid Azure subscription.

How much does Grounding with Bing Search cost?

$14 per 1,000 transactions, for both Grounding with Bing Search and Grounding with Bing Custom Search, with limits of 150 transactions a second and 1 million a day. A transaction is a tool call inside an agent run, so one user question can bill more than one.

What is the best search API alternative to Google's official Search API?

Google's Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers and ends January 1, 2027. Google results APIs such as String ($0.70 per 1,000 on Growth) and Serper ($1.00) return the same kind of result list. Brave ($5) runs its own index. Our SerpApi alternatives page compares the Google results APIs in detail.

Do Google and DuckDuckGo return the same results?

No. In our October 27, 2026 test of 58 questions, Google and DuckDuckGo shared a median of 1 of their top 10 domains, shared none on 15 questions, and put the same domain first on 5. DuckDuckGo says it largely sources its traditional links from Bing.

Sources

• Microsoft, "Bing Search APIs retiring on August 11, 2025"
• Microsoft, Grounding with Bing pricing
• Microsoft Learn, Grounding with Bing Search
• Microsoft Learn, Bing Web Search API v7 response objects
• Microsoft Learn, Bing Web Search API v7 Python quickstart
• Microsoft Q&A, "is there any free plan for bing search api"
• Google for Developers, Custom Search JSON API
• DuckDuckGo, where our results come from
• String search docs
• String search API reference
• String pricing
• String pricing docs
• String MCP server
• Brave Search API
• Brave Search API docs
• SerpApi Bing Search API
• SerpApi pricing
• Serper
• Tavily pricing
• Tavily API credits
• Tavily search docs
• Exa pricing
• Exa search docs
• microsoft/azurechat issue #514, "Bing Search v7 unavailable to deploy"
• open-webui discussion #19100, "Add Azure AI Search as a replacement for Bing"