Search API pricing in 2026: what 1,000 searches really cost an AI agent
Tavily, SerpApi, Brave, Exa and NestDaddy compared on the price per 1,000 searches, and on what a real agent pays once it also reads the pages it finds. Worked example and table, November 2026.
Every search API puts a price per 1,000 searches on its pricing page, and every comparison article copies those numbers into a table. The table is useful, but it hides the part that decides your real bill: an AI agent rarely stops at the search results. It opens the best two or three pages and reads them, because snippets are too short to answer anything properly.
So this post does two things. First, the plain price per 1,000 searches at each provider's entry plan. Then a worked example of a real agent, with page reading included, because that is where the totals change.
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Price per 1,000 searches
Public list prices as of November 2026, at each provider's entry paid plan. Prices change often, so check each site before you decide.
| Provider | Entry paid plan | Per 1,000 searches | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| SerpApi | $25 for 1,000 searches | about $25 | 250 searches a month |
| Tavily | $30 for 4,000 credits | about $7.50 | 1,000 credits a month |
| Exa | pay as you go | about $5 to $7 | trial credits |
| Brave Search API | pay as you go | about $5 | monthly credit |
| NestDaddy | $19 for 5,000 credits | $3.80 on Starter, $1.49 on Scale | 1,000 credits a month, no card |
At this level the ranking looks simple. It is not, because the products do different amounts of work per call.
What a search call does not give you
A search result is a title, a URL and a snippet of one or two sentences. That is enough for a link list, and not enough for an agent that has to explain, compare or summarise. To answer well, the agent reads the pages. How each provider handles that step matters more than the search price:
- SerpApi returns Google's results page as JSON. Reading the pages is your job: you fetch them, deal with blocks and paywalls, and extract the text yourself.
- Brave Search API returns results from Brave's own index. Page text is not part of the search plan, so again you fetch and clean pages yourself.
- Tavily and Exa can return page content as part of the call or through an extract endpoint, priced in their own credits.
- NestDaddy has a page-reading endpoint and an MCP
read_pagetool. A search costs 1 credit, reading a full page costs 2. News search, news by country and research papers use the same credits and the same key.
"Fetch the pages yourself" sounds free, but it means running a scraper: proxies, retries, parsers that break when a site changes its layout, and pages that refuse bots. For a side project that may be fine. For a product, it is a second system to keep alive.
A worked example
An agent answers 250 questions a day. For each question it runs one search and reads one page in full. Over 30 days that is 7,500 searches and 7,500 page reads.
| Provider | What it covers | Monthly cost, approx. |
|---|---|---|
| SerpApi | 7,500 searches; page reading not included | $150 (Production plan, 15,000 searches) plus your scraper |
| Brave Search API | 7,500 searches; page reading not included | about $38 plus your scraper |
| Tavily | 7,500 searches plus extraction | about $68 to $72 in credits at its published per-credit rates |
| NestDaddy | 7,500 searches (7,500 credits) plus 7,500 page reads (15,000 credits) | $49, the Pro plan with 25,000 credits |
Brave is the cheapest line if you already run a good scraper and only need search. Once page reading is part of the job, a plan that includes it, with no second system to maintain, comes out cheaper in money and in engineering time.
What else is in the price
Price per call is one axis. A few others decide whether the API fits your agent:
- Fresh news. Agents get asked about today. NestDaddy includes news by topic and by country from local publishers around the world, refreshed through the day, plus keyword news search going back 120 days. General web search indexes rarely surface news from the last hour.
- MCP. If your agent runs in Claude, Cursor, VS Code or n8n, a remote MCP server saves you writing tool code. NestDaddy ships one; check whether your provider does.
- Your own index or someone else's. Resold Google results can disappear or change terms. An independent index, like Brave's or NestDaddy's, is a separate supply.
- Rate limits and what happens at the limit. Some APIs bill overage automatically. NestDaddy stops at your plan's credits and answers with a clear message, so a loop in your agent cannot run up a bill.
Try it before you choose
The cheapest way to compare is to run your own agent against two or three providers for a day and count the calls. NestDaddy's Free plan gives you 1,000 credits a month with no card, which is enough to test search, news and page reading on real questions.
- Plans and credits: pricing
- Set up the MCP server in Claude, Cursor or VS Code: NestDaddy MCP
- REST reference: API docs
Other providers' prices are taken from their public pricing pages and third-party price trackers in November 2026, rounded, and change often; check their sites for current pricing.