Compared on Nov 12, 2026.

Free Bing SERP API in 2026

Q: Can I use my old Bing code with a free key?

Yes. Change the address to https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search and put a SpecStream key in Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key. The parameters and the parser stay, and the first 10,000 searches come out of the free $10.

10,000 searches free on the Bing v7 call.

Microsoft's free Bing Search API tier gave 1,000 transactions a month. It was retired with the paid tiers on August 11, 2025. Today SerpApi gives 250 free Bing searches a month, DataForSEO a $1 trial credit and Serpent 10 free calls.

SpecStream answers the Bing Web Search v7 call at https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search in Bing's JSON. A new account gets $10 of credit with no card: 10,000 searches, then $1 per 1,000.

Get an API key

New accounts get $10 of credit, no card. It covers 10,000 searches.

What each free Bing API gives before you pay

	SpecStream	Bing Search API Free tier (retired)	SerpApi Bing Search API	DataForSEO Bing Organic SERP API
Free use	$10 of credit on a new account, no card: 10,000 searches. It does not reset and does not expire	1,000 free transactions a month, until the retirement on August 11, 2025	250 searches a month on the Free plan	A $1 trial credit, about 833 SERPs at high priority, and a sandbox whose every value is dummy data
Price after the free part	$1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results, $0.001 each	$25 per 1,000 transactions on S1, until the retirement	$25 a month for 1,000 searches on Starter, $75 for 5,000 on Developer	$0.60 per 1,000 in the Standard queue, $1.20 in the Priority queue, $2.00 in Live mode
To start paying	A top-up from $10. Credit you buy never expires	No sign up: every existing instance was decommissioned and new customer signup ended	A monthly plan	A minimum account top-up of $50
Limits on the free part	No daily limit and no limit per key. A busy call gets a `429` with `Retry-After` and is not charged	The Free tier, F1, was retired with S1 to S9	50 searches an hour on the Free plan	The sandbox returns dummy data. Live data comes from the $1 credit
The call	`GET https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search?q=` with the key in `Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key`, as Bing's v7 took it	`GET https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search?q=` with the key in `Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key`	`GET https://serpapi.com/search?engine=bing&q=` with `api_key`	A task posted to `/v3/serp/bing/organic/`, in the Standard queue, the Priority queue or Live mode
What a call returns	Bing's JSON: `webPages.value[]` with `name`, `url`, `displayUrl` and `snippet`, `queryContext` and `rankingResponse`. Errors come as `ErrorResponse` with Bing's codes	`webPages.value` with `name`, `url` and `snippet` for each result	`organic_results` in SerpApi's own JSON	Rankings, URLs, titles and descriptions, with ads, related searches and other SERP elements
Speed	One call that answers in a few seconds	One call, until the retirement	One call	About 5 minutes on average in the Standard queue, about a minute in Priority, about 6 seconds in Live
What the key also buys	The Search API on the whole live web, the Extract API at $0.80 per 1,000 pages and Deep Search at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row	Microsoft now sells Grounding with Bing Search at $14 per 1,000 transactions, which returns a model's answer and no raw results	The same page as raw HTML or Markdown, with `output=html` or `output=md`	SERP APIs for other engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Baidu, Naver and Seznam

Why start your free Bing searches on SpecStream

Your first free call, in Bing's JSON

curl -G https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search \
  -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "q=coffee roasters in portland" -d count=10

The reply carries _type, queryContext.originalQuery, webPages with value[] (name, url, displayUrl, snippet) and rankingResponse, as the v7 API returned them. A call of up to 10 results takes $0.001 from the $10, so the credit covers 10,000 of them.

Code written for Bing runs unchanged

Change https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search to https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search and put the SpecStream key where the Bing key was. q, count (1 to 50), offset and freshness work as before, and mkt, setLang, cc and safeSearch are accepted. Microsoft's SDKs build {endpoint}/bing/v7.0/search, and that path answers too.

News and images answer on the same credit: Bing News v7 at /v7.0/news/search and Bing Image Search v7 at /v7.0/images/search, each in Bing's shape. The Bing Web Search v7 page lists every field.

No card, no reset, no queue

The $10 comes with a new account and asks for no card. It does not reset at the end of the month, so a project you start this week still has its searches next quarter. There is no sandbox of dummy data: the first call is a live search, and so is the 10,000th.

After the free credit

Each search of up to 10 results costs $0.001, and count=50 costs $0.0058. A top-up starts at $10, and there is no monthly plan to pick. A $5,000 search pack holds 7,500,000 searches on the v7 address, $0.67 per 1,000, and never expires. Every rate is on the pricing page.

The top score on the free credit

A free search is the same search a paying account gets. The SpecStream Search API scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 SimpleQA Verified questions (978 correct), and 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 WideSearch tasks. Every score and its method is on the benchmarks page.

Other free Bing API options

Bright Data SERP API

A free tier of 5K records a month with no credit card, then $1.5 per 1,000 requests pay as you go. Its Bing SERP API takes a https://www.bing.com/search?q= address through a SERP zone you create. SpecStream takes the v7 call your code already sends, with 10,000 searches on the free credit.

Serpent API

10 free calls on a free account and one free demo run a day, then a $10 minimum first deposit. SpecStream's free credit covers 10,000 searches with no deposit.

Grounding with Bing Search

Microsoft's replacement for the Bing Search APIs, at $14 per 1,000 transactions inside Azure AI Foundry. Developers and end users have no access to the raw content it returns. See Grounding with Bing Search alternative.

Brave Search API

$5 in free credits every month, then $5 per 1,000 requests, on Brave's own index and in Brave's shape, so Bing code is rewritten for it. SpecStream answers Bing's call and Brave's call on one key, at $1 per 1,000.

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 get 10,000 free Bing v7 searches

1. Sign up at specstream.ai and open Agents & API in the workspace. A new account gets $10 of credit, no card.

2. Create a key. Give it a name and, if you want one, a spending limit, so a loop in your code cannot spend past it.

3. Send the v7 call with the key in Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key. In Python:

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": "coffee roasters in portland", "count": 10},
).json()

for page in reply.get("webPages", {}).get("value", []):
    print(page["name"], page["url"], page["snippet"])

4. Read the rest of the rates with GET https://api.specstream.ai/v1/capacity/catalog, or on the pricing page.

Get an API key

Frequently asked questions

Something we didn't answer? Talk to a human

Is there a free Bing Search API in 2026?

Not from Microsoft. Its Free tier gave 1,000 transactions a month and was retired with the paid tiers on August 11, 2025. A new SpecStream account gets $10 of credit with no card, which covers 10,000 searches on the same v7 call.

What replaced the free Bing Search API?

Microsoft points customers to Grounding with Bing Search, at $14 per 1,000 transactions on both of its plans, and it returns a model's answer rather than results. SpecStream returns webPages.value[] in Bing's JSON, with 10,000 searches free.

Does SerpApi have a free Bing API?

Yes: its Free plan gives 250 searches a month, up to 50 an hour, then plans start at $25 a month for 1,000. SpecStream's free credit covers 10,000 searches, and after it each search costs $0.001.

Is DataForSEO's Bing API free?

No. New accounts get a $1 trial credit and a sandbox whose values are dummy data, and the first top-up is at least $50. Bing Organic costs $0.60 to $2.00 per 1,000 SERPs by mode.

Can I use my old Bing code with a free key?

Yes. Change the address to https://api.specstream.ai/v7.0/search and put a SpecStream key in Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key. The parameters and the parser stay, and the first 10,000 searches come out of the free $10.

What does a search cost after the free credit?

$1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results, with no monthly plan, and $0.67 per 1,000 through a $5,000 search pack. Credit you buy never expires.

Sources

SpecStream wrote this page. Each figure about Microsoft and other providers comes from that company's own page, read on the date shown.

Microsoft, Bing Search API retirementlearn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/bing-search-api-retirement, read Nov 12, 2026
Microsoft, Azure Retail Prices API, MS Bing Search v7 S1prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?$filter=productName%20eq%20%27MS%20Bing%20Search%20v7%27%20and%20skuName%20eq%20%27S1%27, read Nov 12, 2026
TechRadar, Bing Search API price hiketechradar.com/news/microsoft-is-giving-bing-search-apis-a-huge-price-hike-as-it-continues-ai-push, read Nov 12, 2026
Microsoft, Grounding with Bing pricingmicrosoft.com/en-us/bing/apis/grounding-pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
Microsoft Learn, Grounding with Bing toolslearn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/foundry/agents/how-to/tools/bing-tools, read Nov 12, 2026
SerpApi, Bing Search APIserpapi.com/bing-search-api.md, read Nov 12, 2026
SerpApi pricingserpapi.com/pricing.md, read Nov 12, 2026
DataForSEO, Bing Organic SERP API pricingdataforseo.com/pricing/serp/bing-organic-serp-api, read Nov 12, 2026
DataForSEO, free testing of the Bing APIdataforseo.com/help-center/how-to-use-bing-search-engine-api-with-python-free-testing-with-dataforseo, read Nov 12, 2026
DataForSEO pricingdataforseo.com/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
Bright Data SERP API pricingbrightdata.com/pricing/serp.md, read Nov 12, 2026
Bright Data, Bing SERP APIdocs.brightdata.com/products/serp-api/get-started-bing-serp-api.md, read Nov 12, 2026
Serpent, Free Bing SERP APIapiserpent.com/blog/free-bing-serp-api, read Nov 12, 2026
Brave Search APIbrave.com/search/api/, read Nov 12, 2026
SpecStream benchmarksspecstream.ai/benchmarks, read Nov 12, 2026
SpecStream for agentsspecstream.ai/agents.md, read Nov 12, 2026