# Ceramic, top-up: Web search API

> Web-scale search that's 20× cheaper, 10× faster, accurate & fully independent.

Ceramic's web search API on its Pay As You Go plan. It costs $0.25 per 1,000 searches. It returns 1 of the 6 key fields we check: Text.
Half of the 177 plans we rank by price cost $2.50 per 1,000 searches or less. This plan is cheaper than 98% of the 177 plans.
The cheapest plan we rank by price is [Ceramic, $99 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/ceramic/99-monthly/llms.txt), at $0.20 per 1,000 searches.
[Search1API](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/search1api/19-monthly-basic-post-search-search/llms.txt), [Firecrawl](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/firecrawl/top-up-from-5-pay-as-you-go-on-scale/llms.txt) and [Valyu](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/valyu/499-monthly/llms.txt) are the best web search API providers in our benchmark.

- This page: https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/ceramic/top-up
- [Best web search API in 2026](https://datacircle.dev/best-web-search-api.txt)
- Get it: https://ceramic.ai/pricing
- Request: `POST https://api.ceramic.ai/search`
- API key: with the plan, on https://ceramic.ai/pricing
- Its API docs: https://docs.ceramic.ai/api-reference/search
- Sold by: Ceramic (https://ceramic.ai)
- Checked: 2026-10-27

## In the answer

- Completeness: 17%
- Text: ✓

## Price

- $ per 1,000 searches: $0.25
- Per: call
- Billing: pay first

## Aggregators

- Aggregators: none

## Charges

- Most per search: 20
- Also pays for: nothing else

## In their words

- Their pitch: Web-scale search that's 20× cheaper, 10× faster, accurate & fully independent.

## Data

- Keep data: "retain, cache, or store Output beyond what is reasonably necessary to display such Output to your authorized end users in the ordinary and real-time course of use, unless expressly permitted in an applicable Order Form"
- Use data: "Ceramic hereby grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to use the Ceramic IP solely for the purpose of receiving the Services for your internal business purposes during the Term." [...] "Except as otherwise expressly permitted in these Terms, you will not (and will not permit others to): (a) reproduce, modify, adapt, or create derivative works of the Services, (b) rent, lease, distribute, sell, sublicense, transfer, or provide access to the Services to a third party, (c) use the Services for the financial benefit of any third party not authorized under these Terms, (d) interfere with or otherwise circumvent mechanisms in the Services intended to limit your use, (e) reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile, translate, or otherwise seek to obtain or derive the source code, underlying ideas, algorithms, models, or non-public APIs of the Services, except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law (and then only upon advance notice to us), (f) remove or obscure any proprietary or other notices contained in the Services, (g) use the Services for competitive analysis, benchmarking, or to build competitive products or services, (h) publicly disseminate information regarding the performance of the Services without Ceramic's prior written consent, (i) use the Services for any illegal, misleading, or harmful purpose, or in any manner inconsistent with these Terms, (j) upload or transmit any malicious code, viruses, or harmful programs, (k) interfere with the performance, integrity, or availability of the Services, (l) use Output (as defined below) to develop, train, or improve competing products or services, (m) encourage, assist, or permit any third party to do any of the foregoing, (n) collect, aggregate, store, or compile Output, including search results, relevance scores, or rankings, for the purpose of creating or contributing to any database, dataset, index, or corpus, whether or not such database, dataset, index, or corpus is used for a purpose that competes with Ceramic, (o) resell, syndicate, or otherwise make Output available to any third party on a standalone basis or as a separately accessible component of another product or service, provided that you may display Output to your authorized end users within your own application so long as such Output is integrated into your application's functionality, is incident to the end user’s real-time query, and is not independently accessible, extractable, or downloadable by end users or third parties, or (p) retain, cache, or store Output beyond what is reasonably necessary to display such Output to your authorized end users in the ordinary and real-time course of use, unless expressly permitted in an applicable Order Form."

## Plan

- Expires: never

## Rate limit

- Per second: 20

## Speed

- Answer: in the call

## The call

- You send: query. Optional: maxDescriptionLength, maxResults
- Method: POST
- Path: /search

## About the plan

- Plan: Pay As You Go
- Who can get it: anyone at least 18 years of age with the legal capacity to enter into the Terms and, when using the Services on behalf of an organization, the authority to bind it

## The 6 fields the plan's answer can hold

request ID, page title, URL, description, execution time, total results

## Ceramic's plans (3)

- [Ceramic, top-up](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/ceramic/top-up/llms.txt): $0.25 per 1,000, 17% complete
- [Ceramic, $99 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/ceramic/99-monthly/llms.txt): $0.20 per 1,000, 17% complete
- [Ceramic, contact us](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/ceramic/contact-us/llms.txt): 17% complete

## Ceramic's calls (1)

- `POST /search`: [Ceramic, top-up](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/ceramic/top-up/llms.txt)

## Ceramic's APIs (1)

- [Ceramic: web search API pricing, 3 plans](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/ceramic/top-up/llms.txt)

## Ceramic: web search API alternatives

- [Searlo, $199.99 pack, Pro, POST /search-and-scrape, Search and Scrape](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/searlo/199-99-pack-pro-post-search-and-scrape-search-and-scrape/llms.txt): $0.222 per 1,000, 17% complete
- [Context.dev, $9,500 yearly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/context-dev/9500-yearly/llms.txt): $0.317 per 1,000, 17% complete, live
- [browserfoundry, $996 yearly, Startup, POST /api/v2/search/fast](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/browserfoundry/996-yearly-startup-post-api-v2-search-fast/llms.txt): $0.369 per 1,000, 33% complete
- [Search1API, $4,990 yearly, Enterprise (annual), POST /news, News](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/search1api/4990-yearly-enterprise-annual-post-news-news/llms.txt): $0.416 per 1,000, 33% complete, live

## Sources

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.

- https://ceramic.ai
- https://ceramic.ai/pricing
- https://ceramic.ai/terms-of-service
- https://docs.ceramic.ai/admin/rate-limits
- https://docs.ceramic.ai/api-reference/openapi.json
- https://docs.ceramic.ai/api-reference/search