Bing Search API not working

Your v7 call, at a new address

# Before: retired on August 11, 2025
curl -G https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search \
  -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: $BING_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "q=Who founded Mistral AI and when?" -d count=10

# After: 200 with webPages.value[]
curl -G https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search \
  -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: $SPECSTREAM_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "q=Who founded Mistral AI and when?" -d count=10

The path, the header, the parameters and the parser stay as they are. Only the address and the key change, and there are no fields to map.

What happened to the Bing Search API

Microsoft's lifecycle notice set August 11, 2025 as the retirement date. It says existing instances are decommissioned completely and the product is no longer available to be used or for new customer sign-up. The Message Center notice names the Bing Search resources on the F1 and S1 through S9 tiers and the F0 and S1 through S4 resources of Bing Custom Search.

That is why the portal has no Bing Search resource to create and no key to copy. On December 4, 2025 a developer asked on Microsoft Q&A how to get a Bing Search key, and the portal answered with the sign-in error AADSTS16000. A SpecStream key replaces it in the same header.

Why Grounding with Bing Search is not the same call

Microsoft points customers to Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI Agents. It is a tool an agent calls while a model writes its answer, priced at $14 per 1,000 transactions. A Microsoft answer on Q&A says the returned results are not raw search listings, and Microsoft's page says developers and end users don't have access to the raw content. Your code that reads webPages.value[] has nothing to read there.

SpecStream returns the results themselves, in Bing's JSON, to any code and any model, at $5 per 1,000 searches.

What stays the same

The route reads q, count (1 to 50, default 10), offset and freshness (Day, Week, Month, a range or one date). textFormat=HTML escapes the text as Bing did. mkt, setLang, cc, safeSearch, responseFilter, answerCount, promote and textDecorations are accepted, so a request your code sends today needs no edit.

Errors come back as ErrorResponse with Bing's codes. A 401 with InvalidAuthorization means the SpecStream key is missing or wrong, and RateLimitExceeded comes with a 429. dateLastCrawled is not in the reply: each search reads the live web at the moment of the call.

$5 per 1,000 searches

A search of up to 10 results takes $0.005 from your balance, and each started block of 10 more adds $0.006, so count=50 costs $0.029. Credit you buy never expires, and a call stopped by a 429 charges nothing. Every rate is on the pricing page.

The most accurate web search API, at about one second

SpecStream scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions (978 correct), and 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks. The Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Each score and its method is on the benchmarks page.

On November 9, 2026 production took 1 to 20 searches a second through the fast search every drop-in route uses, and answered 718 of 720. The median was 0.82 s at 1 search a second and 1.07 s at 20 a second, and the 95th percentile stayed between 1.09 and 1.73 s. One account takes up to 8,800 searches a minute; a call over that gets a 429 with Retry-After and is not charged.

You decide what is kept

Zero retention is a field on each key. A search made with such a key keeps no request text and no answer after the reply. The charge keeps the account, the key, the request ID, the price and the time.

POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/account/keys

{
  "name": "production",
  "scopes": ["account:read", "finds:spend"],
  "spend_cap_cents": 500000,
  "zero_retention": true
}

Search is the first call, and the same key does the rest

GET /v1/web-search returns up to 100 results for one search and an answer with the page it was read from. The Extract API reads up to 20 pages or documents a call at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, and a page with no text is not charged. Deep Search returns every match on the live web as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, with the most a run can cost quoted before it starts.

Grounding with Bing Search

Microsoft's replacement: a tool inside Azure AI Agents at $14 per 1,000 transactions, counted by the tool calls in a run. It returns a model's answer with citations, and developers don't get the raw results. SpecStream returns the results in Bing's JSON at $5 per 1,000. The Grounding with Bing Search alternative page compares the two.

Grounding with Bing Custom Search

The same tool limited to the sites you choose, at the same $14 per 1,000 transactions on Microsoft's page. Its documentation sits under Agents (classic), which Microsoft says will be retired on March 31, 2027. On SpecStream, site: in q keeps a search to one site at $0.005.

Brave Search API

A search API on Brave's own index at $5 per 1,000 requests, with $5 in free credits every month. Its reply has Brave's shape, so Bing code is rewritten for it. SpecStream answers the Bing call your code already sends, and Brave's call too, at https://api.specstream.ai/res/v1/web/search.

Tavily

A search API for agents billed in credits, at $0.008 a credit pay as you go. SpecStream answers Tavily's call as well, at https://api.specstream.ai/tavily/search, for $0.005 a search.

Exa

A search API priced from $4 per 1,000 requests of up to 10 results. Its reply has Exa's shape. SpecStream answers Exa's call at https://api.specstream.ai/exa/search and Bing's at https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search, on one key.