Alternatives
Search API alternatives for AI agents
Exa, Tavily, Perplexity, Tako — and the Bing News Search API, retired in 2025. What each one costs, what it’s best at, and what it takes to switch to typesearch.
Side by side
| Provider | Their cheapest search · per 1,000 | typesearch fast · per 1,000 | Switching | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exa | $7Search, text and highlights of up to 10 results included | $1.405× cheaper | Same SDK: two lines change | Full page text; people, company and paper search |
| Tako | $7Fast | $1.405× cheaper | Same SDK: two lines change | Charts from licensed datasets |
| Perplexity | $1Search API with Fast Search | $1.4040% more | Same SDK: two lines change | Low-cost web search; cited answers through its Agent API |
| Tavily | $8fast search (1 credit) | $1.405.7× cheaper | Rewrite one request | General web search, crawl and extract |
| Bing News Search API | Retired | $1.40 | Retired: replace it | Retired on August 11, 2025 |
List prices as each provider publishes them, checked September 25, 2026: the cheapest search of each, against our fast mode. Every mode is compared on each provider’s page. typesearch charges per request, with no seats or minimums, and results served from the cache are free.
One page per provider
Exa (exa.ai, formerly Metaphor)
The Exa alternative, 2.1–7× cheaper
News search for 2.1–7× less than Exa, depending on the mode — $1.00 for ultra, which judges headlines only, and $1.40 for fast against $7, $5.60 against $12–15 in deep — with the exa-py and exa-js SDKs you already have.
typesearch vs ExaTako (tako.com)
The Tako alternative, 3.5–7× cheaper
Tako’s web results, 3.5–7× cheaper for the same work, through the Tako SDK you already use, plus verification and structure on every result. Need charts? We build them from the news and your own data, with a source on every value.
typesearch vs Takothe Perplexity Search API
The Perplexity alternative for news search
Perplexity’s Search API is $5 per 1,000 requests; our normal mode, which reads the top results before ranking them, is $2.20. For plain headline search its Fast Search, at $1, costs the same as our ultra and less than our fast. Same Perplexity SDK, plus a calibrated score, verification and structure on every result.
typesearch vs PerplexityTavily (tavily.com)
The Tavily alternative, 2.8–8× cheaper
Search built for agents, like Tavily — 2.8–8× cheaper per search depending on the mode, with a calibrated relevance probability on every result and the top ones read and verified before they’re ranked. One request to rewrite; your agent stays the same.
typesearch vs Tavilythe Bing News Search API v7
A replacement for the Bing News Search API
The Bing News Search API is gone. typesearch does the same job — a query, a time window, a list of articles with title, description, date and outlet — plus a calibrated relevance probability on every result, from $1.40 per 1,000 searches.
typesearch vs Bing News Search API
Alternatives, one page each
Honest lists of options for news search, with what each is best at.
Exa
Best Exa alternatives for news search in 2026
People look past Exa for news when they want results judged for recency and relevance rather than similarity, publication time and outlet on every result, or a lower price per search.
The optionsTavily
Best Tavily alternatives for news search in 2026
People look past Tavily for news when they need news-first results with outlet and publication time, filters by country for news, or a lower price per search at volume.
The optionsPerplexity
Best Perplexity Search API alternatives for news in 2026
People look past Perplexity for news when they need results judged and read before they’re ranked, typed answers per article, or a free credit to start.
The optionsNewsAPI.org
Best NewsAPI.org alternatives in 2026
People look past NewsAPI.org when they need to ship on a free or low-cost plan, need full article text, or need results judged for an AI agent rather than a list.
The options
News APIs, compared
Plans, free tiers, archive, coverage and parameters, side by side, with sources.
- typesearch vs NewsAPI.orgA news API with a 5-year archive
- typesearch vs GNewsA low-cost news API with full text
- typesearch vs NewsData.ioA news API with a 10-year archive and AI tags
- typesearch vs NewsCatcherAn enterprise news API with rich NLP
- typesearch vs Event RegistryA news API with events, concepts and a 2014+ archive
- typesearch vs mediastackA simple, low-cost news API
- typesearch vs PerigonA news context platform with rich enrichment
- typesearch vs APITubeA low-cost news API with many filters
- typesearch vs SerpApiGoogle News results, scraped
- typesearch vs Brave Search APIA web search API with a news endpoint
- typesearch vs LinkupA web search API for AI, with sourced answers
- typesearch vs ParallelA web search API for agents, with monitors
Questions
Is there a cheaper alternative to Exa for news?
Yes. typesearch costs 2.1–7× less than Exa, depending on the mode: $1.00 per 1,000 ultra searches and $1.40 per 1,000 fast ones against $7, and $5.60 in deep against $12–15. It also works with the Exa SDK: change the base URL and the key. For plain headline search, Perplexity’s Fast Search and Parallel’s fast mode cost $1 per 1,000: the same as our ultra and less than our fast.
Which search APIs work with the Exa SDK?
typesearch exposes Exa-compatible endpoints at /compat/exa — search, findSimilar and getContents — with the same parameters and response shapes. It does the same for the Tako and Perplexity SDKs.
What replaced the Bing Search APIs?
Microsoft retired every Bing Search API on August 11, 2025, and points to Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure AI Agents. If you need a list of news articles rather than a model’s answer, a news search API such as typesearch replaces it in one request.
Is typesearch a general web search API?
It’s built for news and editorial content, crawled by us — the busiest sources every few minutes — focused on local and regional press, starting with Latin America. For product pages, docs or forums across the open web, a general web search API is a better fit; to search a list of pages you choose, use a custom index.
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