AI Web Search & Scraping APIs

AI web search and scraping APIs give applications a managed way to find current pages, turn websites into usable text or structured data, and pass that context to an AI agent. This tag covers developer APIs whose core job is live web retrieval, scraping, crawling or extraction; a general browser automation tool without a reusable data API does not qualify.

Match the API to the retrieval job

Use search endpoints when the agent starts with a question and needs relevant sources. Use scrape or extract endpoints when URLs are already known and clean Markdown, metadata or schema-shaped JSON is required. Crawl and map functions matter when the job spans many pages of one site. Check whether JavaScript rendering, PDFs, authentication and interactive pages are supported.

Compare reliability, evidence and cost

Test source freshness, failed-page behavior, duplicate removal, citations and the ability to constrain domains, countries and result depth. Review robots and site terms before collection. Compare credits or request pricing with a realistic mix of searches, rendered pages and large crawls, because headline prices rarely describe the full workload.

Common questions

Is a search API the same as a scraping API?

No. Search discovers relevant URLs; scraping retrieves and cleans a known page. Some platforms combine both, but their coverage, latency and billing can differ.

What should an AI agent receive?

Prefer traceable URLs plus clean, relevant content or structured fields. Preserve provenance so users can inspect the original source instead of treating generated summaries as evidence.