# Oxylabs, free: Web search API

> The /v1/search endpoint performs live web searches and returns ranked organic results, including titles, snippets, URLs, position metadata, and related queries.

Oxylabs's web search API on its Welcome credits plan. It costs $0.00 per 1,000 searches. It returns 1 of the 6 key fields we check: Text.
The cheapest of the 177 plans 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/oxylabs/free
- [Best web search API in 2026](https://datacircle.dev/best-web-search-api.txt)
- Get it: https://oxylabs.io/products/web-api/scrape/targets/pricing
- Request: `POST https://webapi.oxylabs.io/v1/search`
- API key: with the plan, on https://oxylabs.io/products/web-api/scrape/targets/pricing
- Its API docs: https://developers.oxylabs.io/api-reference/core-endpoints#post-v1-search
- Sold by: Oxylabs (https://oxylabs.io)
- Checked: 2026-10-27

## In the answer

- Completeness: 17%
- Text: ✓

## Price

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

## Aggregators

- Aggregators: none

## Charges

- Most per search: 20
- Also pays for: from the same budget: 167 other calls

## Overage

- Units cap: hard

## Not found

- $ per 1,000: $0.00

## In their words

- Their pitch: The /v1/search endpoint performs live web searches and returns ranked organic results, including titles, snippets, URLs, position metadata, and related queries.

## Data

- Freshness: live
- Keep data: no limit
- Use data: General Conditions: “Without our written consent you may not access the Services for purposes of monitoring their availability, performance or functionality or for any other competitive purposes.” 4.2.5: “the Services can only be used for lawful and legitimate purposes as defined by the best practice standards and this Agreement. Pursuant to the preamble, the Services cannot be used for competitive purposes”. 4.2.9: “the Services shall be used only by and for the benefit of the Customer”. 4.2.10: “the Customer shall not: sell, resell (unless explicitly agreed otherwise in the SoW), license, sublicense, distribute, make available, rent or lease the Services, interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of the Services, permit direct or indirect access to or use of the Services in a way that circumvents the agreed usage limits or other specifications, or use the Services in a manner that violates our Acceptable Use Policy, access or use any of Oxylabs’ intellectual property except as permitted under this Agreement, modify, copy, or create derivative works based on the Services or any part, feature, function or interface thereof, disassemble, reverse engineer, or decompile the Services, or access it to (1) build a competitive product or service, (2) build a product or service using similar ideas, features, functions or graphics of the Services, (3) copy any ideas, features, functions or graphics of the Services, (4) determine whether the Services are within the scope of any patent.” 4.2.11: “If the Customer uses the Services in relation to artificial intelligence (hereinafter - “AI”) systems or models [...] the Customer represents and warrants that such activities comply with all applicable AI laws, including but not limited to the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (the “EU AI Act”), and that it will not use the Services in connection with any AI system falling within Prohibited AI Practices, as defined in the EU AI Act or other activities prohibited by applicable AI laws.” 8.1: “You are solely responsible for the Data you Access by using the Services. As one of the conditions to your use of the Services you agree to not use the Services in a way that would infringe any applicable laws or third party rights, including privacy and intellectual property rights, this Agreement, including but not limited to Acceptable Use Policy.” “The Customer acknowledges that automated data gathering conducted by the Customer by using the Services may constitute input for AI training or development and undertakes to ensure that any such data collection is lawful, respects third-party rights, and is compatible with the Customer’s EU AI Act obligations and other AI Laws.” 4.3.9: “Oxylabs reserves the right to retain data gathered through the Customer's use of the Web Scraper API and Web Unblocker Services under this Agreement and may use it at its sole discretion. Oxylabs will take full responsibility for any and all Oxylabs's use of such data.” Acceptable Use Policy, Automated data gathering: “For this reason we require the Customer not to use the Services (or the data obtained through them) in a way that would: 1. Include collecting or accessing non-public data. Unless the Customer has permission from the site, only publicly available data may be scraped, 2. Be in violation of applicable terms of use/service or other legal documents, 3. Include collecting, accessing, requesting, querying, searching for, or otherwise processing special categories of personal data (e.g., health data), or personal data of minors without a valid legal basis and compliance with applicable legal requirements, 4. Include collecting, accessing, requesting, querying, searching for, or otherwise processing any personal data, unless the Customer (i) has a valid legal basis, (ii) ensures full compliance with all obligations to data subjects under applicable law, (iii) implements appropriate technical and organizational safeguards to protect personal data, and (iv) implements other relevant data protection requirements, 5. Include developing, training, deploying, operating or using Artificial intelligence systems in any manner that violates applicable laws or regulations (including the EU AI Act) or any third party rights. 6. Amount to the extraction or re-utilization of all or a substantial part of the contents of a third-party database, including through the repeated and systematic extraction of insubstantial parts thereof or by reconstructing such contents from data obtained through the Services.” Acceptable Use Policy, Prohibited activities: “The breach of AUP would be considered any of the activities established below (“Prohibited activities”): 1. Posting, requesting, searching for, querying, transmissioning, re-transmissioning, accessing or storing (“Access”) material on or through the Services, if in the sole judgment of Oxylabs such Access is: (a) in violation of any local, state, federal, or non-United States law or regulation (including rights protected by copyright and related rights, including but not limited to database, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property or similar laws or regulations), (b) threatening or abusive, (c) obscene, (d) indecent, or (e) defamatory. Each Customer shall be responsible for determining what laws or regulations are applicable to its use of the products and services. 2. Introduction of malicious programs into the Oxylabs servers (e.g., viruses, trojan horses, worms and etc.). 3. Causing or attempting to cause security breaches or disruptions of Internet communications. Examples of security breaches include but are not limited to accessing/ data of which the Customer is not an intended recipient, or logging into a server or account that the Customer is not expressly authorized to access/request. Examples of disruptions include but are not limited to port scans, flood pings, packet spoofing and forged routing information. 4. Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account or any usage limit, rate limit or other restriction applied by Oxylabs to the Services . 5. Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the Customer's host (e.g., denial of service attack). 6. Furnishing false or incorrect data on the SoW (electronic or paper) or when signing up on Oxylabs self-service dashboard, including fraudulent use of credit card numbers or attempting to circumvent or alter the processes or procedures to document "use" of Oxylabs products or Services. 7. Sending unsolicited mail messages, including the sending of "junk mail" or other advertising material to individuals who did not specifically request such material, who were not previous customers of the Customer or with whom the Customer does not have an existing business relationship (e.g., E-mail "spam"), or distributing, advertising or promoting software or services that have the primary purpose of encouraging or facilitating unsolicited commercial E-mail or spam. 8. Using the Services in any way for the use of ticket buying bots or other automated purchasing tools where such use is prohibited by applicable law. 9. Using the Services in any way to generate invalid ad traffic (via clicks, impressions or otherwise). 10. Using the Services on behalf of or for the benefit of any person subject to sanctions, or to circumvent sanctions, export controls. 10. Using the Services to develop, train, deploy, operate or use any AI system or model that falls within the Prohibited AI Practices under the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (“EU AI Act”)(including, without limitation, biometric categorization based on sensitive traits, social scoring, emotion recognition in workplace or educational contexts, or the untargeted collection of facial images). Where the Services are used to develop, train, deploy, operate or use any High-Risk AI System or General-Purpose AI Model (GPAI) as defined by the EU AI Act, the Customer must ensure full compliance with all applicable obligations under the EU AI Act.”

## Plan

- Pay: $0
- You get: $5
- Enough for: 5,000 calls, once
- Expires: valid indefinitely while on the free plan, carried into the first billing cycle of a plan started after it, then lapses

## Speed

- Answer: in the call

## The call

- You send: query. Optional: max_results, location
- Method: POST
- Path: /v1/search

## About the plan

- Plan: Welcome credits
- Who can get it: new accounts, one $5 credit per team, not per user

## The 14 fields the plan's answer can hold

state, position, page title, snippet, URL, related questions, related question title, related question snippet, related searches, query, location, max results, timestamp, request ID

## Oxylabs's plans (5)

- [Oxylabs, free](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/oxylabs/free/llms.txt): $0.00 per 1,000, 17% complete, live
- [Oxylabs, $30 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/oxylabs/30-monthly/llms.txt): $1.00 per 1,000, 17% complete, live
- [Oxylabs, $100 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/oxylabs/100-monthly/llms.txt): $1.00 per 1,000, 17% complete, live
- [Oxylabs, $500 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/oxylabs/500-monthly/llms.txt): $1.00 per 1,000, 17% complete, live
- [Oxylabs, $2,500 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/oxylabs/2500-monthly/llms.txt): $1.00 per 1,000, 17% complete, live

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

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

## Oxylabs's APIs (2)

- [Oxylabs: SERP API pricing, 5 plans, POST /v1/scrape/bing/search](https://datacircle.dev/serp-apis/oxylabs/free-welcome-credits-post-v1-scrape-bing-search/llms.txt)
- [Oxylabs: SERP API pricing, 5 plans, POST /v1/scrape/google/aimode](https://datacircle.dev/serp-apis/oxylabs/free-welcome-credits-post-v1-scrape-google-aimode/llms.txt)
- [Oxylabs: SERP API pricing, 5 plans, POST /v1/scrape/google/search, Google search](https://datacircle.dev/serp-apis/oxylabs/free-welcome-credits-post-v1-scrape-google-search-google-search/llms.txt)
- [Oxylabs: SERP API pricing, 5 plans, POST /v1/scrape/google/search, Google search, JavaScript rendering](https://datacircle.dev/serp-apis/oxylabs/free-welcome-credits-post-v1-scrape-google-search-google-search-javascript-rendering/llms.txt)
- [Oxylabs: web search API pricing, 5 plans](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/oxylabs/free/llms.txt)

## Oxylabs: web search API alternatives

- [Serpex, top-up from $5](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/serpex/top-up-from-5/llms.txt): $0.80 per 1,000, 17% complete, live
- [Context.dev, $90 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/context-dev/90-monthly/llms.txt): $0.90 per 1,000, 17% complete, live
- [Search1API, top-up from $5, Pay as you go, POST /news, News](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/search1api/top-up-from-5-pay-as-you-go-post-news-news/llms.txt): $1.00 per 1,000, 33% complete, live
- [Nimble, pay as you go, Pay as you go, POST /v2/search, Search, lite](https://datacircle.dev/web-search-apis/nimble/pay-as-you-go-pay-as-you-go-post-v2-search-search-lite/llms.txt): $1.10 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 2026-10-27.

- https://developers.oxylabs.io/api-reference/core-endpoints.md
- https://developers.oxylabs.io/dashboard/credit-based-billing.md
- https://developers.oxylabs.io/help-center/billing-and-payments/are-there-any-additional-fees-i-should-be-aware-of.md
- https://developers.oxylabs.io/help-center/most-popular-questions/how-pricing-and-billing-work.md
- https://developers.oxylabs.io/products/web-api/search.md
- https://oxylabs.io/legal/oxylabs-terms-of-service
- https://oxylabs.io/legal/v1-acceptable-use-policy
- https://oxylabs.io/pricing
- https://oxylabs.io/products/web-api/scrape/targets/pricing
- https://oxylabs.io/products/web-api/search/pricing