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# Best Bing Search API alternatives in 2026: prices and a test

Compared on Nov 12, 2026. The page: https://specstream.ai/best-bing-search-api-alternatives

Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025. Its replacement, Grounding with Bing, costs $14 per 1,000 transactions and returns a model's answer. SerpApi's Bing engine starts at $25 a month, and DataForSEO's queue at $0.60 per 1,000.

SpecStream is the live web data engine. It answers Bing's own v7 call in Bing's JSON for $1 per 1,000 searches, so your code changes one line. The test on this page runs it beside the others with your keys.

[Get an API key](https://specstream.ai/signup?src=alternatives-best-bing-search-api-alternatives&utm_source=alternatives-md&utm_campaign=best-bing-search-api-alternatives&returnTo=%2Fworkspace%2Fsearch%3Froute%3Dbing) New accounts get $10 of credit, no card. It covers 10,000 searches.

## The Bing Search API alternatives side by side

| | SpecStream | Grounding with Bing | SerpApi (Bing engine) | DataForSEO (Bing Organic) | Brave Search API |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What your Bing code calls | The v7 call itself: `GET https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search` with `q`, `count`, `offset`, `mkt` and `freshness`, the key in `Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key` | No v7 call. A tool an Azure AI agent calls while a model writes its response | A new call: `https://serpapi.com/search?engine=bing` with `q`, `mkt`, `cc` and `first`, the key in `api_key` | A new call: a task posted to `/serp/bing/organic/*` and collected with a second request, or one POST in Live mode | A new call: `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search`, the key in `X-Subscription-Token` |
| The reply | Bing's JSON: `webPages.value[]` with `name`, `url`, `displayUrl`, `snippet` and `datePublished` when known. Errors come as `ErrorResponse` with Bing's codes | A model's response with citations. Developers and end users have no access to the raw content it returns | SerpApi's JSON: `organic_results[]` with `position` and `title`, read from Bing's results page | One SERP of up to 10 results per request | Brave's JSON, from its own index |
| Price per 1,000 searches | $1 for up to 10 results | $14 per 1,000 transactions, counted by the number of tool calls per run | $25 a month for 1,000 searches on Starter, $3,750 a month for 1,000,000 on Cloud 1M | $0.60 on the Standard queue, $1.20 on the Priority queue, $2.00 in Live mode | $5 per 1,000 requests |
| Speed and limits | Median answer 0.82 seconds at one search a second and 1.07 seconds at 20 a second, measured on production on November 9, 2026 | 150 transactions per second and 1 million a day | 200 searches an hour on Starter, 1,000 on Developer, its guaranteed throughput | About 5 minutes on average on the Standard queue, with a target of 45 minutes. Up to 6 seconds on average in Live mode | 50 queries per second |
| More than 10 results | `count` runs 1 to 50, as on Bing. `count=50` costs $0.0058 a call | `count` defaults to 5, with a maximum of 50 | 100 results or an empty page both count as 1 search | More results through the `depth` parameter, at a reduced rate per page | Up to 20 results a request, and `offset` up to 9 |
| How you start | $10 of credit on sign-up, no card: 10,000 searches | An Azure AI Foundry project. The plan can only be used there or as a knowledge source in Azure AI Search | 250 searches a month on the Free plan | A free trial, then $0.0006 per SERP | $5 in free credits every month |
| Past the results page | Page text at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, an answer with its sources at $5 per 1,000 searches, and full datasets as rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, on the same key | Your interface must show both the website URLs and the Bing search query URLs | ZeroTrace mode keeps no search parameters, queries or results | Ads, related searches and other SERP features in the same reply | Answers at $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million tokens. Storing results needs a custom plan |

## Why SpecStream is the best Bing Search API alternative

### Your v7 code keeps working

Every other row in the table is a new integration: a new address, new parameters, a new reply to parse. SpecStream answers the call your code already sends. The address changes, and the key.

```
import requests

# Before: the retired Bing Web Search API
# ENDPOINT = "https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search"

# After: the same call, answered by SpecStream
ENDPOINT = "https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search"

reply = requests.get(
    ENDPOINT,
    headers={"Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key": SPECSTREAM_KEY},
    params={"q": "Who founded Mistral AI and when?", "count": 10, "mkt": "en-US"},
).json()

for page in reply["webPages"]["value"]:
    print(page["name"], page["url"], page["snippet"])
```

The reply is Bing's: `_type` `SearchResponse`, `queryContext`, `webPages.value[]` and `rankingResponse`. `mkt`, `setLang`, `cc` and `safeSearch` are accepted, so the request needs no edit. Microsoft's own SDKs build `{endpoint}/bing/v7.0/search`, and that path answers too.

### The price at 1,000,000 searches a month

On SpecStream, 1,000,000 searches of up to 10 results cost $1,000, paid from your balance with no plan. At the prices each company prints today, the same month is $14,000 on Grounding with Bing, $5,000 on Brave, $3,750 on SerpApi's Cloud 1M plan, and $2,000 on DataForSEO's Live mode. DataForSEO's $600 Standard queue answers in about 5 minutes on average, too slow for a user waiting on a search.

### Results your code reads, from the live web

Microsoft's replacement hands the results to a model, and its documentation says developers have no access to the raw content. SpecStream returns them to your code, read from the live web at the moment of the call. Its Search API is the most accurate web search API in the world: 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 SimpleQA Verified questions (978 correct) and 64.0 item F1 on all 200 WideSearch tasks, on the [benchmarks](https://specstream.ai/benchmarks?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=best-bing-search-api-alternatives) page.

### The test: run the same queries on each API

Comparison pages quote rate cards. This script times the same 10 queries on SpecStream, SerpApi's Bing engine and Brave, and counts the results each returns. Set the keys you hold as environment variables; an API with no key is skipped. On SpecStream the run costs 1¢ of your $10 credit.

```
import os, statistics, time, requests

QUERIES = [
    "who founded mistral ai and when",
    "python 3.13 release date",
    "largest container ports in europe",
    "nvidia h200 memory bandwidth",
    "bing search api retirement date",
    "population of lagos",
    "rust 2024 edition stable release",
    "eu ai act general purpose model obligations",
    "how many moons does saturn have",
    "boiling point of water at 2000 meters",
]

def specstream(q, key):
    r = requests.get("https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search",
                     headers={"Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key": key},
                     params={"q": q, "count": 10}, timeout=60)
    return r.json().get("webPages", {}).get("value", [])

def serpapi_bing(q, key):
    r = requests.get("https://serpapi.com/search",
                     params={"engine": "bing", "q": q, "api_key": key}, timeout=60)
    return r.json().get("organic_results", [])

def brave(q, key):
    r = requests.get("https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search",
                     headers={"X-Subscription-Token": key},
                     params={"q": q, "count": 10}, timeout=60)
    return r.json().get("web", {}).get("results", [])

APIS = [("SpecStream", specstream, "SPECSTREAM_API_KEY"),
        ("SerpApi engine=bing", serpapi_bing, "SERPAPI_KEY"),
        ("Brave Search API", brave, "BRAVE_KEY")]

for name, call, env in APIS:
    key = os.environ.get(env)
    if not key:
        continue
    seconds, counts = [], []
    for q in QUERIES:
        start = time.perf_counter()
        counts.append(len(call(q, key)))
        end = time.perf_counter()
        seconds.append(end-start)
    answered = sum(1 for c in counts if c > 0)
    print(f"{name}: median {statistics.median(seconds):.2f} s, "
          f"{answered}/{len(QUERIES)} answered, {statistics.mean(counts):.1f} results a query")
```

Our own run on production on November 9, 2026: 718 of 720 searches answered, with a median of 0.82 seconds at one search a second and 1.07 seconds at 20 searches a second. Every call is in your request log with its `latency_ms` and `price_usd`, at `GET https://api.specstream.ai/v1/account/requests`.

### One key for search, pages and datasets

A Bing integration often read the top URLs next. On SpecStream the same key reads them: `POST /v1/extract` returns page text for $0.80 per 1,000 pages, and a page with no text is not charged. When the product needs a whole dataset in place of a results page, Deep Search takes the request in plain words, quotes the most it can cost, and delivers structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. See the [Search API](https://specstream.ai/search-api?utm_source=alternatives&utm_campaign=best-bing-search-api-alternatives).

## Other Bing Search API alternatives

### SpecStream

The live web data engine. It answers Bing's `/v7.0/search` call in Bing's JSON at $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results, with $10 of credit on sign-up and no card. The same key reads pages for $0.80 per 1,000 and returns full datasets as rows.

### Bright Data SERP API

A SERP API that collects structured results from Google, Bing and other engines, in under 1 second per request by its own docs. It is priced per 1,000 successful requests, and failed requests are not billed. Its reply is Bright Data's own shape, so Bing code is rewritten for it. SpecStream answers the Bing call as it is.

### ScrapingBee

A scraping API sold in monthly credit plans. Hobby is $19 a month for 75,000 API credits, and a request with JavaScript rendering costs 5 credits. SpecStream returns search results as JSON your code reads, at $1 per 1,000, with nothing to render or parse.

### Parallel

A search API for agents priced by mode: $1 per 1,000 requests for its fastest modes, $5 per 1,000 for basic and advanced, and a call that names no mode runs advanced. Its reply has its own shape. SpecStream keeps your Bing code at $1 per 1,000.

### Tavily

A search API for agents, billed in credits. Pay as you go costs $0.008 a credit, and the free Researcher plan has 1,000 credits a month. Its reply has its own shape. On SpecStream, 1,000 searches in Bing's JSON cost $1.

## How to switch from the Bing Search API

1. Create a key under Agents & API in the workspace. A new account gets $10 of credit, no card, which covers 10,000 searches.

2. Set the search address to `https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search` where your code has `https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search`, and send the SpecStream key in `Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key` or as a Bearer token.

```
import requests

ENDPOINT = "https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search"  # was https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search

reply = requests.get(
    ENDPOINT,
    headers={"Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key": SPECSTREAM_KEY},
    params={"q": "Who founded Mistral AI and when?", "count": 10},
).json()

for page in reply["webPages"]["value"]:
    print(page["name"], page["url"], page["snippet"])
```

3. Leave the rest. `q`, `count`, `offset` and `freshness` work as before. A call of up to 10 results costs $0.001, and `count=50` costs $0.0058. The key carries the spending limit you give it.

4. Run the test above with your old provider's key beside it, and compare the numbers on your own queries.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the best Bing Search API alternative in 2026?

SpecStream, at $1 per 1,000 searches. It answers the v7 call at `https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search` in Bing's JSON, so your code changes one line, and its Search API scores 97.9 on SimpleQA Verified.

### Is the Bing Search API still available?

No. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025 and decommissioned every existing instance. Its notice points customers to Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI Agents, at $14 per 1,000 transactions.

### What is the cheapest Bing Search API replacement?

For an answer while the user waits, SpecStream at $1 per 1,000 searches. DataForSEO prints $0.60 per 1,000 on its Standard queue, which answers in about 5 minutes on average; its Live mode is $2.00 per 1,000.

### How do I keep a Bing integration running without scraping Bing?

Send the v7 call to SpecStream. It answers `GET /v7.0/search` in Bing's JSON, `webPages.value[]` with `name`, `url` and `snippet`, for $1 per 1,000 searches, with no browser, proxy or HTML parser on your side.

### How were these Bing Search API replacements tested?

Each price comes from the company's own page, read on November 12, 2026, and listed under Sources. SpecStream's speed was measured on production on November 9, 2026: 718 of 720 searches answered, median 0.82 seconds. The script on this page reruns the test on your queries.

### Does SpecStream work with Microsoft's Bing SDKs?

Yes. The SDKs build `{endpoint}/bing/v7.0/search`, and that path answers, so an SDK works with its endpoint set to `https://api.specstream.ai`.

## Sources

SpecStream wrote this page. Each rival figure comes from that company's own page, read on Nov 12, 2026.

- [Microsoft: Bing Search APIs retiring on August 11, 2025](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/bing-search-api-retirement), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Microsoft: Grounding with Bing pricing](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/apis/grounding-pricing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Microsoft: Grounding with Bing Search tools](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/foundry/agents/how-to/tools/bing-tools), read Nov 12, 2026
- [SerpApi: Bing Search Engine Results API](https://serpapi.com/bing-search-api), read Nov 12, 2026
- [SerpApi pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [DataForSEO: Bing Organic SERP API pricing](https://dataforseo.com/pricing/bing-serp/bing-organic-serp-api), read Nov 12, 2026
- [DataForSEO: Bing SERP API](https://dataforseo.com/apis/serp-api/bing-serp-api), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Brave Search API](https://brave.com/search/api/), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Brave Search API documentation](https://api-dashboard.search.brave.com/app/documentation/web-search/get-started), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Bright Data: SERP API introduction](https://docs.brightdata.com/scraping-automation/serp-api/introduction), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Bright Data: SERP API pricing and billing](https://docs.brightdata.com/products/serp-api/pricing-and-billing), read Nov 12, 2026
- [ScrapingBee pricing](https://www.scrapingbee.com/pricing/), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Parallel: search modes](https://docs.parallel.ai/search/modes.md), read Nov 12, 2026
- [Tavily pricing](https://tavily.com/pricing), read Nov 12, 2026