Datacircle

Best cached web search API in 2026

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We benchmarked 3 cached web search API providers. We list all three, ranked by score. For each one, we show its top scoring plan, each part of the plan's score and what 1,000 searches cost. We rank 60 plans by price. The cheapest plan is ContextFetch, $499 monthly, Scale, at $0.384 per 1,000 searches.

  1. #1 Exa: Cached web search API

    Exa, top-up from $5, Developer (pay as you go)

    It returns all 6 key fields we check. 5 are in the plan's price: Date, Author, Text, Links, Answer. 1 costs extra: Summary.

    Overall score
    77.3
    $ per 1,000
    $7.00
    Price score
    50
    • $ per 1,000 searches that find nothing: $7.00
    • Plans of this API we rank by price: 60
    • Plans cheaper per 1,000 searches than this plan: 26
    Data score
    94
    Cost to get started score
    93
    • How you pay: a top-up you pay first
    • Least to pay before your first result: $5
    Bundle score
    83
    • Also pays for, from the same budget: Search (every other type and category) · Contents · Answer · Monitors · Agent
    Performance score
    100
    • This call's median time on 27 October 2026, minus the baseline: 1.332 s
    • Exa, Search, the fastest benchmarked provider: 1.332 s
    • On 27 October 2026, we sent this provider all 80 searches in our benchmark.
    • We scored this plan 0.9375 out of 1 in our benchmark, so its Data score is 94.

  2. #2 Parallel: Cached web search API

    Parallel, top-up, Pay as you go

    It returns 2 of the 6 key fields we check: Date, Text.

    Overall score
    72.8
    $ per 1,000
    $5.00
    Price score
    55
    • $ per 1,000 searches that find nothing: $5.00
    • Plans of this API we rank by price: 60
    • Plans cheaper per 1,000 searches than this plan: 22
    Data score
    84
    Cost to get started score
    93
    • How you pay: a top-up you pay first
    • Least to pay before your first result: no minimum, you top up any amount
    Bundle score
    89
    • Also pays for, from the same budget: Search API · Image Search API · Extract API · Task API · Task Group API · Responses API and 2 more
    Performance score
    62
    • This call's median time on 27 October 2026, minus the baseline: 2.156 s
    • Exa, Search, the fastest benchmarked provider: 1.332 s
    • On 27 October 2026, we sent this provider all 80 searches in our benchmark.
    • We scored this plan 0.8375 out of 1 in our benchmark, so its Data score is 84.

  3. #3 Firecrawl: Cached web search API

    Firecrawl, top-up from $5, Pay-as-you-go on Scale

    It returns 1 of the 6 key fields we check: Date.

    Overall score
    60.2
    $ per 1,000
    $12.00
    Price score
    39
    • $ per 1,000 searches that find nothing: the provider's pages don't say
    • Plans of this API we rank by price: 60
    • Plans cheaper per 1,000 searches than this plan: 33
    Data score
    79
    Cost to get started score
    93
    • How you pay: a top-up you pay first
    • Least to pay before your first result: $5
    Bundle score
    89
    • Also pays for, from the same budget: Scrape · Crawl · Map · Interact · Monitor · Agent · Search · Search the Developer Index
    Performance score
    6
    • This call's median time on 27 October 2026, minus the baseline: 20.94 s
    • Exa, Search, the fastest benchmarked provider: 1.332 s
    • We scored this provider on 20 of the 80 searches in our benchmark. We sent it those 20 on 27 October 2026.
    • We scored this plan 0.7896 out of 1 in our benchmark, so its Data score is 79.

The Data score on cached web search APIs

Out of 100: the percent of searches that returned the page we asked for. We searched for each data provider's API pricing page. The right page is the pricing page on the provider's own site. Each search API here uses its own copy of the web for some or all of its answers. If a provider ran on fewer searches, we compare it with how the others did on those same searches. That way, easy searches can't raise its score.

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