Crustdata Web Search API alternative
$1 per 1,000 searches.
Crustdata's Web Search API costs 1 credit per query, and its docs send you to the dashboard for the dollar price. The default limit is 10 requests per minute, and purchased credits expire 12 months after you buy them.
SpecStream is the live web data engine for teams and agents. Its Search API costs $1 per 1,000 searches with speed=fast, returns up to 100 results a call, and reads pages and builds structured rows on the same key. Credit never expires.
New accounts get $10 of credit, no card. It covers 10,000 fast searches.
SpecStream and Crustdata Web Search side by side
| SpecStream | Crustdata Web Search | |
|---|---|---|
| The call | GET or POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search with a Bearer key, or the search_web tool over MCP at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp | POST https://api.crustdata.com/web/search/live with a Bearer key and x-api-version: 2025-11-01 |
| Price | $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results with speed=fast, $5 per 1,000 on the default search. Each reply's price_usd says what the call cost | 1 credit per query. The price of a credit is shown in your dashboard, and the per credit rate drops as your volume grows |
| Free start | $10 of credit, no card: 10,000 fast searches or 2,000 default searches | $20 in credits on a new account |
| Requests a minute | A call past the minute's limit gets 503 with Retry-After and is not charged | 10 by default. Higher limits by email |
| Results per call | 1 to 100, set with num, and page 1 to 10 continues the same ranked list | About 10 a page, and page gathers up to 15 pages into one reply, from one source only |
| What comes back | Each source's url, title, site, snippet and published date. The default search adds the answer with the page it was read from and its read time, and rows with the facts the request asks for, each with its page | results[] whose shape depends on the source: title, url, snippet and position for web and news |
| Filters | site:, -site:, filetype:, after: and before: in q, with country, language and safe. Image results with images=true at the same price | site, location, start_date and end_date in Unix seconds, and the sources web, news, scholar-articles, scholar-author, ai and social |
| Reading the pages | Extract API: up to 20 pages, PDFs, Word and Excel files a call, the main text as Markdown, $0.80 per 1,000 pages. A page with no text is not charged | Web Fetch (/web/enrich/live): up to 10 URLs a call, 1 credit per page, returning the page's HTML |
| Credit you do not use | A top-up never expires | Purchased credits expire 12 months after purchase |
| Structured rows | Deep Search: a request in plain words returns every match on the live web as structured rows, companies, people, places, filings or tenders, with a source URL and read time on every value. 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row | People, company and job search and enrichment from its own database, priced in credits per result |
Why Crustdata Web Search buyers choose SpecStream
A dollar price on the page
Crustdata prices its Web Search API in credits, and the price of a credit is in the dashboard after sign-up. SpecStream prints its price: $0.001 for a fast search of up to 10 results, $0.005 on the default search, the same on every plan. 100,000 fast searches cost $100, and you know it before the first call.
The most accurate web search API in the world
On SimpleQA Verified the SpecStream Search API scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official questions, 978 of them correct. On WideSearch it scores 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official tasks. The Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Every score and its method is on the benchmarks page.
The answer, with the page that prints it
A Crustdata search returns links and snippets, and your code reads them. The SpecStream default search reads the pages for you: a question with one answer comes back as answer.value with the page it was read from and its read time, and a request for many results comes back as rows, each value with its page. passages=true adds the text of each page closest to the question, up to about 3,500 characters.
Search, pages and rows on one key
The same key reads up to 20 pages or documents a call with the Extract API at $0.80 per 1,000 pages. Deep Search takes a request in plain words and returns every match on the live web as structured rows that meet every condition you wrote, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, plus 5¢ for an email and 15¢ for a phone. The most a run can cost is quoted before it starts, and a saved request reruns hourly to yearly with every row labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching.
SpecStream also holds public records read every morning at specstream.ai/data, and signals such as funding rounds, new executives and layoffs at specstream.ai/signals.
Other web search APIs for AI agents
SpecStream
The live web data engine for teams and agents, and the most accurate web search API in the world. $1 per 1,000 searches with speed=fast or $5 on the default search, up to 100 results a call, page reading at $0.80 per 1,000 pages and structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.
Exa
Search costs $7 per 1,000 requests on the auto and fast types. SpecStream costs $1 per 1,000 with speed=fast, and Exa code moves by changing its base address to https://api.specstream.ai/exa.
Tavily
Pay as you go costs $0.008 per credit, and a basic search costs 1 credit: $8 per 1,000. SpecStream answers Tavily's own calls at https://api.specstream.ai/tavily for $1 per 1,000.
Brave Search API
$5 per 1,000 requests. SpecStream answers Brave's own /res/v1/web/search call at $1 per 1,000, with the same key in X-Subscription-Token.
Parallel
Search from $1 per 1,000 requests. SpecStream costs the same $1 per 1,000 with speed=fast, and answers from the pages on the default search at $5.
How SpecStream scores
The same numbers as the benchmarks page, from the official tasks and scorers.
| SpecStream |  Parallel |  Exa |  Tavily |  Perplexity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web researchWideSearch, GPT-5.6 Luna | 60.9 | 45.5 | 53.0 | 47.9 | 47.0 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Luna | 96 | 94 | 91 | 94 | 94 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Sol | 99 | 97 | 91 | 92 | 95 |
How to switch from Crustdata Web Search
1. Create a key under Agents & API in the workspace, with finds:spend and a spending limit. A new account gets $10 of credit, no card.
2. Move the fields: query becomes q, location becomes country, site becomes site: inside q, and start_date and end_date become after: and before: with dates. page stays page, and num sets how many results come back.
# Before
curl https://api.crustdata.com/web/search/live \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CRUSTDATA_API_KEY" \
-H "x-api-version: 2025-11-01" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"query": "AI agent product launch", "site": "techcrunch.com", "location": "US", "sources": ["web"]}'
# After
curl https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"q": "AI agent product launch site:techcrunch.com after:2026-10", "country": "US", "speed": "fast", "num": 10}'3. Read data.sources: each item has url, title, site and snippet, where Crustdata has url, title and snippet. Read pages with POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/extract and up to 20 URLs in urls, where you called /web/enrich/live with 10.
4. When the job is records, send the request in plain words. This call spends nothing: the 402 reply shows how SpecStream read the request, the columns and the most it can cost.
curl -i https://api.specstream.ai/v1/agent/lists \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"request": "AI startups that announced a product launch in the last 30 days, with the product name, the launch date and the announcement URL", "count": 25}'Frequently asked questions
Something we didn't answer? Talk to a human
How much does the Crustdata Web Search API cost?
speed=fast and $5 on the default search.What is the Crustdata Web Search API rate limit?
503 with Retry-After and is not charged.How many results does Crustdata Web Search return?
num.Do Crustdata credits expire?
What is the best Crustdata Web Search alternative?
speed=fast. It is the most accurate web search API in the world, with 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 SimpleQA Verified questions, and the same key reads pages and returns structured rows.Does SpecStream have an MCP server?
https://api.specstream.ai/mcp. An agent searches with search_web, reads pages with read_pages and builds rows with Deep Search. See the MCP docs.Sources
SpecStream wrote this page. Each figure about Crustdata and other providers comes from that company's own page.
- Crustdata, Web Search APIdocs.crustdata.com/web-docs/search/introduction, read Nov 12, 2026
- Crustdata, Web Search referencedocs.crustdata.com/web-docs/search/reference, read Nov 12, 2026
- Crustdata, API reference, web searchdocs.crustdata.com/api-reference/web-apis/web-search, read Nov 12, 2026
- Crustdata, pricing docsdocs.crustdata.com/general/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- Crustdata pricingcrustdata.com/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- Exa pricingexa.ai/docs/admin/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- Tavily API creditsdocs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits, read Nov 12, 2026
- Brave Search APIbrave.com/search/api/, read Nov 12, 2026
- Parallel pricingparallel.ai/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026