Seltz pricing and alternatives: cached web search API, POST /v1/search, Search, base

17% complete: 1 of the 6 key fields we checkSee the 6 fields

$0.00per 1,000 searchesThe cheapest of the 40 plans we rank by price is ContextFetch, $499 monthly, Scale, POST /v1/search, at $0.384 per 1,000 searches.Octen, Parallel and Firecrawl are the best cached web search API providers in our benchmark.

Plan: Free tier one of Seltz's 4 plans

Call: POST /v1/search, Search, base one of Seltz's 2 calls

API: Cached web search API one of Seltz's 3 APIs

About this item

Stored. You get pages from Seltz's index. Seltz doesn't say how old its data is.
1 of the 6 key fields we check. Date.
Nothing to pay. You get $20 of credit once, enough for about 6,666 calls.
One call. You send query to POST /v1/search. You set tier to "base". The call returns the matching web pages.
Who can get it: anyone 18 or over, for non-commercial use only. Keep data: with conditions. Use data: with conditions.

The table starts with Seltz's cheapest paid plan. Next come plans from other providers with the price per 1,000 searches closest to Seltz's.

	Seltz, pay as you go, Pay-as-you-go, POST /v1/search, Search, base	ContextFetch, top-up from $10, Pay as you go, POST /tavily/search	Parallel, top-up, Pay as you go, POST /v1/search, Search (turbo)	Octen, top-up from $5, Base, POST /news-search	Tako, top-up, Pay as you go, POST /api/v3/search, Search, instant
$ per 1,000 searches	$3.00	$0.50	$1.00	$3.00	$7.00
Completeness	17%	50%	33%	33%	33%
Billing	pay as you go	pay first	pay first	pay first	pay first
Pay	monthly	$10	any amount	$5	any amount
Enough for	as many as you pay for	20,000 calls	as many as you pay for	as many as you pay for	as many as you pay for
Freshness	stored	stored	stored	1 minute	stored
Who can get it	anyone 18 or over with a payment method added	anyone	anyone outside the jurisdictions export law bars	anyone	anyone who signs up

From each provider's own pricing page and docs, and from what providers tell us. We read this row from these pages on 2026-10-27.

The key fields this plan's answer can hold, then each filled column in its row on the sheet.

Aggregators
Aggregators	none

Charges
Most per search	1,000
Also pays for	from the same budget: Search, pro · Answer · Fetch · Monitor · Agent

Not found
$ per 1,000	$0.00

In their words
Their pitch	Search the web for relevant context

Data
Freshness	stored
Keep data	Except as expressly permitted by Seltz in writing, you may not [...] (ii) store, aggregate, or reuse Output to serve multiple End Customers or requests, (iii) use the Output to create, compile, or build a dataset or database
Use data	Except as expressly permitted by Seltz in writing, you may not (i) reproduce, distribute, publicly display, or otherwise make available any Third-Party Data on a standalone basis, [...] (iv) commercialize, resell, or sublicense the Output or any Third-Party Data or (v) represent that Output was human-generated when it is not, you may not [...] (iii) use Output from the Platform to develop models that compete with Seltz, (iv) use the Platform for the purpose of benchmarking, performance testing, or competitive analysis, or publicly disclose the results of any such activities, without Seltz’s prior written consent, (v) use any automated or programmatic method to extract data or output from the Platform, including scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction, you may use the free tier for non-commercial purposes only, if you make the Platform or any Output available to third parties or end users as part of your products or services, you must enter into a binding written agreement with each End Customer that contains terms that are no less protective of Seltz

The call
You send	query, tier "base". Optional: scope, max_results, include_domains, exclude_domains, from_date, to_date, fields.content, fields.content.max_characters_per_result, fields.snippets, fields.snippets.max_snippets, fields.snippets.max_snippets_per_result, fields.snippets.max_tokens, fields.snippets.max_tokens_per_result
Method	POST
Path	/v1/search

About the plan
Plan	Free tier
Who can get it	anyone 18 or over, for non-commercial use only

The 5 fields the plan's answer can hold

request ID, URL, content, published date, snippets