# Expand, free: Web search API

> Send a question and get back the pages on the web most relevant to it, ranked, each with its title and an excerpt, for 1.5 credits.

Expand's web search API on its Free plan. It costs $0.00 per 1,000 searches. It returns none of the 6 key fields we check: Date, Author, Text, Summary and 2 more.
We haven't run Expand through [our web search API benchmark](https://datacircle.dev/best-web-search-api.txt) yet.
This plan is free. We rank 583 plans for web search APIs by price. Half the plans cost $3.99 per 1,000 searches or less.
[browserfoundry by keirolabs's $99.99 monthly plan](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/browserfoundry-by-keirolabs/99-99-monthly-startup-post-api-v2-search-lite/llms.txt) is the cheapest paid plan per 1,000 searches: $0.033.
[browserfoundry by keirolabs](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/browserfoundry-by-keirolabs/10-pack-starter-pack-post-api-v2-search-lite/llms.txt), [Context.dev](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/context-dev/300-monthly/llms.txt) and [Exa](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/exa/top-up-from-5-developer-pay-as-you-go-post-search-search/llms.txt) are the best web search API providers in the Datacircle benchmark.

- This page: https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/expand/free
- [Web search API: the best of 30+ providers compared](https://datacircle.dev/best-web-search-api.txt)
- Get it: https://expand.ai/pricing?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- Request: `POST /v1/search`
- API key: with the plan, on https://expand.ai/pricing?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- Its API docs: https://expand.ai/api-reference/search/search.search?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- Sold by: Expand (https://expand.ai?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing)
- Checked: 2026-11-05

## In the answer

- Completeness: 0%

## Price

- $ per 1,000 searches: $0.00
- Per: call
- Billing: free

## Aggregators

- Aggregators: none

## Charges

- Most per search: 10
- Also pays for: from the same budget: Fetch · Fetch JSON Mode · Start Batched Fetch · Snapshot Highlights · Crawl

## Overage

- Units cap: hard

## Not found

- $ per 1,000: $0.00

## In their words

- Their pitch: Send a question and get back the pages on the web most relevant to it, ranked, each with its title and an excerpt, for 1.5 credits.

## Data

- Keep data: no limit
- Use data: 3.1 Public web content only. The Services are designed and intended solely for accessing content that is publicly accessible without authentication. Content remains publicly accessible for this purpose when a website places a CAPTCHA, bot check, or similar bot-mitigation measure in front of it, and the Services may automatically complete such measures when accessing that content. You may not use the Services to access, retrieve, capture, or process content that is behind a login, authentication wall, paywall, or other access control that limits it to authorized users [...] 3.2 Prohibited uses. You may not use the Services, or permit the Services to be used, to: (a) violate any applicable law, including computer misuse, anti-circumvention, privacy, data protection, consumer protection, export control, and intellectual property laws, (b) collect, aggregate, or infer sensitive personal information (such as health, financial, biometric, or precise geolocation data, government identifiers, or information about children), or build profiles of individuals for surveillance, stalking, harassment, discrimination, or eligibility decisions subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act or similar laws, (c) send unsolicited communications or engage in other abusive conduct toward target websites or third parties, (d) generate request volumes against a target website that are designed to, or that you know are likely to, degrade or disrupt that website, (e) capture credentials, session tokens, cookies, or authenticated user data, (f) infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property or other rights of any person, or (g) transmit malicious code or harmful content. We may publish an acceptable use policy in the Documentation that provides further detail consistent with this Section 3, in the event of a conflict, this Section 3 controls. 3.4 Restrictions on the Services. Except as expressly permitted by these Terms, you may not, and may not permit any third party to: (a) sell, resell, sublicense, or otherwise redistribute raw access to the Services or the API (as distinct from providing Output within your own products and services), (b) modify, create derivative works of, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Services, Iris, the API, or our dashboard, or attempt to derive the source code, models, model weights, or training data of any of them, (c) use the Services to develop a product or service that competes with the Services, or use Output for the purpose of building or training a web data extraction service that competes with the Services, (d) circumvent or attempt to circumvent metering, usage limits, credentials, or other technical restrictions of the Services, (e) interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of the Services or the systems of Expand or its suppliers, or (f) remove or obscure any proprietary notices in the Services or the Documentation.

## Plan

- Pay: $0
- You get: 10,000 credits
- Enough for: about 6,666 calls
- Expires: 365 days

## Rate limit

- Concurrent: 2
- Batch: 1

## Speed

- Answer: in the call

## The call

- You send: query. Optional: maxResults
- Method: POST
- Path: /v1/search

## About the plan

- Plan: Free
- Who can get it: anyone aged 18 or over able to form a binding contract, for business and professional use

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

search ID, query, URL, page title, excerpt, score

## Expand's plans (3)

- [Expand, free](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/expand/free/llms.txt): $0.00 per 1,000, 0% complete
- [Expand, top-up from $1](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/expand/top-up-from-1/llms.txt): $1.50 per 1,000, 0% complete
- [Expand, contact us](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/expand/contact-us/llms.txt): 0% complete

## Expand's calls for this API (1)

- `POST /v1/search`: [Expand, free](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/expand/free/llms.txt)

## Expand's APIs (2)

- [Expand: web search API pricing, 3 plans](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/expand/free/llms.txt)
- [Expand: web scraping API pricing, 3 plans, POST /v1/fetch](https://datacircle.dev/web-scraping-apis/expand/free-post-v1-fetch/llms.txt)
- [Expand: web scraping API pricing, 3 plans, POST /v1/fetch/json](https://datacircle.dev/web-scraping-apis/expand/free-post-v1-fetch-json/llms.txt)
- [Expand: web scraping API pricing, 3 plans, POST /v1/fetch/batched](https://datacircle.dev/web-scraping-apis/expand/free-post-v1-fetch-batched/llms.txt)

## Expand: web search API alternatives

- [Zhipu, top-up, Prepaid balance (充值), POST /paas/v4/web_search, Search-Std](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/zhipu/top-up-prepaid-balance-post-paas-v4-web-search-search-std/llms.txt): $1.496 per 1,000, 33% complete
- [Firecrawl, $749 monthly, Scale, POST /v2/search, Search](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/firecrawl/749-monthly/llms.txt): $1.498 per 1,000, 33% complete
- [Social Fetch, $225 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/social-fetch/225-monthly/llms.txt): $1.50 per 1,000, 17% complete, live
- [Scrapingdog, $900 yearly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/scrapingdog/900-yearly/llms.txt): $1.50 per 1,000, 0% complete
- [Scrapall, $45 pack](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/scrapall/45-pack/llms.txt): $1.667 per 1,000, 17% 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 2026-11-05.

- https://expand.ai?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- https://expand.ai/api-reference/search/search.search?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- https://expand.ai/docs/limits?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- https://expand.ai/docs/pricing-and-usage?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- https://expand.ai/docs/tiers?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- https://expand.ai/pricing?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing
- https://expand.ai/terms-of-service?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=web-search-api-pricing