Sofya pricing and alternatives: web search API, POST /v1/search, Search, basic

Sofya's site llms.txt Best web search API in 2026

50% complete: 3 of the 6 key fields we checkSee the 6 fields

$0.00per 1,000 searchesThe cheapest of the 218 plans we rank by price is Keenable, free, Keyless, at $0.00 per 1,000 searches.Context.dev, Serpex and Search1API are the best web search API providers in our benchmark.

Plan: Free tier one of Sofya's 2 plans

Call: POST /v1/search, Search, basic one of Sofya's 4 calls

API: Web search API Sofya's only API

Web search API

About this item

Freshness. We don't know how fresh this plan's data is.
3 of the 6 key fields we check. 2 are in the plan's price: Date, Text. 1 costs extra: Answer.
Nothing to pay. You get 2,000 credits a month, enough for 1,000 calls. Calls stop once your credits run out. Unused credits expire after 30 days.
One call. You send query to POST /v1/search. You can also send search_depth, max_results, include_answer, include_domains, exclude_domains, topic and freshness. The call returns the matching web pages.
Who can get it: with conditions. Keep data: no limit. Use data: with conditions.

Sofya: web search API alternatives

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

	Sofya, top-up from $10, Pay as you go, POST /v1/search, Search, basic	Search1API, top-up from $5, Pay as you go, POST /ask	Firecrawl, top-up from $5, Pay-as-you-go on Standard, POST /v2/search	You.com, pay as you go, x402	Linkup, top-up, Pay as you go, POST /v1/search, Search, standard
$ per 1,000 searches	$5.00	$5.00	$5.00	$5.00	$5.00
Completeness	50%	33%	33%	33%	17%
Billing	pay first	pay first	pay first	pay as you go	pay first
Pay	$10	$5	$5	per call	any amount
Enough for	2,000 calls	as many as you pay for	1,000 calls	as many as you pay for	as many as you pay for
Freshness	unknown	live	unknown	unknown	unknown
Who can get it	anyone: email sign-ups start at 0 credits on pay-as-you-go	anyone	anyone at least 18 years old, or 13 years or older with the express permission of a parent or guardian	anyone with a funded wallet (USDC on Base or Solana): no You.com account, no API key	anyone

Every web search API provider we score, ranked

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.

Product details

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

Date
Author, not in the answer
Text
Summary, not in the answer
Links, not in the answer
Answercosts more

Price
$ per 1,000 searches	$0.00
Per	call
Billing	free

Aggregators
Aggregators	none

Charges
Most per search	20
Extra fields	answer: +$0.00
Also pays for	from the same budget: Search, snippets · Fetch · Extract · Research

Overage
Units cap	hard

Not found
$ per 1,000	$0.00

In their words
Their pitch	Search the web and get page content, not just snippets. Choose a search depth to balance speed and detail, and add an AI answer when you want one.

Data
Keep data	no limit
Use data	You agree that you will not, and will not allow any third party (including any of your end users) to: Use the Service to violate any applicable law or regulation, or the rights of any third party (including intellectual-property, privacy, and contract rights), Use the Service to access, collect, or compile information about specific individuals for the purpose of profiling, doxxing, surveillance, or unsolicited contact, Use the Service to produce, distribute, or facilitate the production of malware, phishing pages, fraudulent content, spam, or material that infringes copyright or trademark, Use the Service to make consequential, fully-automated decisions about individuals (for example employment, credit, insurance, housing, or law-enforcement decisions) without meaningful human oversight, Resell, sublicense, or redistribute the Service as a substantively similar API to third parties, or build a directly competing product on top of the Service, Reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Service, or attempt to extract the source code or non-public APIs, except to the extent applicable law prohibits this restriction, Circumvent or attempt to circumvent any rate limit, credit metering, authentication mechanism, or security control, Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service, or breach or otherwise circumvent any security or authentication measures (except in good-faith security research disclosed to us promptly at security@sofya.co), Use the Service in any way that overburdens its infrastructure, interferes with its integrity or performance, or degrades it for other users. [...] we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable licence to access and use the Service for your internal business or personal purposes. [...] you are solely responsible for ensuring that downstream use of content (re-publication, redistribution, training, indexing, large-scale storage, automated decision-making about individuals) is lawful and permitted by the rights holder.

Plan
Pay	$0
You get	2,000 credits a month
Enough for	1,000 calls a month
Expires	30 days

Rate limit
Per second	30

Speed
Answer	in the call

The call
You send	query. Optional: search_depth, max_results, include_answer, include_domains, exclude_domains, topic, freshness
Method	POST
Path	/v1/search

About the plan
Plan	Free tier
Who can get it	anyone who signs in with a GitHub account at least a year old (email sign-ups don't get it)

The 18 fields the plan's answer can hold

query, page title, URL, snippet, page content, page fetched, published date, sublink title, sublink description, sublink URL, result table, search depth, topic, response time, credits used, credits remaining, altered query, relaxed query