Oxylabs Web Intelligence Index alternative
Search from $1 per 1,000.
Oxylabs' Web Intelligence Index is a search index for RAG and agents: Oxylabs crawls the web 24/7 and returns Markdown or JSON in under a second. It is in active development, and access goes through a contact form.
SpecStream is the live web data engine for teams and agents. Its Search API searches the live web for each query, at $1 per 1,000 fast searches or $5 with an answer, on a key you can create today.
New accounts get $10 of credit, no card. It covers 10,000 fast searches or 12,500 pages.
SpecStream and Oxylabs' search for AI side by side
| SpecStream | Oxylabs | |
|---|---|---|
| How you start | Sign up and create a key. $10 of credit, no card, covers 10,000 fast searches | The Web Intelligence Index is in active development, and Oxylabs asks teams to contact it. The /Search API gives $5 of welcome credit toward any product |
| Price per 1,000 searches | $1 on the fast tier (speed=fast) and $5 for the default search, each with up to 10 results. A search that returns no results costs nothing | /Search: $1 per 1,000 searches, up to 15K searches on Starter. The Index is offered through the contact form |
| Where results come from | The live web, searched for each query | Index: pages crawled 24/7 and stored in a searchable index. When data is missing or outdated, a call can trigger a live scrape. /Search: a live web search |
| What comes back | Ranked sources with URL, title, site, snippet and publish date. passages=true adds the text of the top pages, up to about 3,500 characters on each source. The default search adds the answer to a fact, with the page it was read from | Index: clean Markdown or JSON with metadata and citations. /Search: ranked URLs and relevant snippets |
| Response time | A few seconds for a search read from the live web | Index: context in under a second, from the stored index |
| Reading pages you name | Extract API: $0.80 per 1,000 pages, up to 20 a call, as Markdown. PDF, Word and Excel files too. A page with no text is not charged | /Scrape: from $0.50 per 1,000 results |
| Frameworks and agents | MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp with the search_web tool. LangChain and LlamaIndex Firecrawl loaders and clients written for Tavily, Exa, Brave or Serper work by changing the base address | Index: built for integration with LangChain and LlamaIndex. Oxylabs also offers an MCP Server and Agent Skills |
| A full dataset from one request | Deep Search: every match on the live web as structured rows, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a delivered row. The most the run can cost is quoted before it starts | Index: built for fast discovery, not deep page-level extraction. Oxylabs sends that to its Web Scraper API |
Why teams that wait for the Index start on SpecStream
A live search does not age
Oxylabs names the problem with its own Index: "The moment data is indexed, it starts aging." Its answer is a fallback that triggers a live scrape when a result is missing or outdated. The SpecStream Search API searches the live web for every query, and each source carries its publish date when the page states one, so your agent sees how new each result is.
A key today, at $1 per 1,000 searches
The Index has a contact form. A SpecStream key comes from the workspace when you sign up, and the first call looks like this:
curl "https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search?q=retrieval+augmented+generation+benchmarks&speed=fast" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY"A fast search of up to 10 results costs $0.001. Drop speed=fast for the default search at $0.005, which answers a question of fact with the page it was read from. Add passages=true for the text of the top pages, ready for a prompt. More on the Search API page.
The most accurate web search API on the official benchmarks
The SpecStream Search API scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 SimpleQA Verified questions, 978 of them correct, and 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 WideSearch tasks. The Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Every score and its method is on the benchmarks page.
Discovery, page text and rows on one key
Oxylabs built the Index for fast discovery and keeps deep extraction in its Web Scraper API. One SpecStream key calls the Search API, the Extract API at $0.80 per 1,000 pages, and Deep Search, which returns every match for a request as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row.
Keep the client you have
A client written for Tavily, Exa, Brave, Serper, Bing, Firecrawl or SerpApi moves to SpecStream by changing its base address and key, and each call through a drop-in address costs $1 per 1,000 searches. Every address is listed in SpecStream for agents.
Other web search APIs for RAG and agents
SpecStream
The live web data engine for teams and agents. The Search API costs $1 per 1,000 fast searches and $5 with an answer, the Extract API $0.80 per 1,000 pages, and Deep Search 5¢ to $1 a delivered row. A new account starts with $10 of credit, no card.
Oxylabs /Search
Oxylabs' live search API, at $1 per 1,000 searches on monthly plans, returning ranked URLs and snippets. SpecStream's fast search costs the same $1 per 1,000 with no plan, and passages=true adds the page text.
Tavily
A search API billed in credits at $0.008 each pay as you go: a basic search is 1 credit and an advanced search 2. SpecStream answers Tavily's search call at https://api.specstream.ai/tavily for $1 per 1,000 searches.
Exa
A neural search API at $7 per 1,000 requests on auto and fast, with up to 10 results, and $1 per 1,000 results above 10. SpecStream answers Exa's search call at https://api.specstream.ai/exa for $1 per 1,000 searches.
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 start on SpecStream
1. Create a key under Agents & API in the workspace. A new account gets $10 of credit, no card, which covers 10,000 fast searches.
2. Send your queries to GET https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search with the key as a Bearer token, and speed=fast for $1 per 1,000. Send an Idempotency-Key header to retry safely.
3. For page text, send the URLs to POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/extract, up to 20 a call, at $0.80 per 1,000 pages.
4. For an agent, add the MCP server at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp. Its search_web tool runs the same search, and the client setup is in the MCP docs.
Comparing every Oxylabs product? See Oxylabs alternatives.
Frequently asked questions
Something we didn't answer? Talk to a human
What is the Oxylabs Web Intelligence Index?
How much does the Oxylabs Web Intelligence Index cost?
What is the best alternative to the Oxylabs Web Intelligence Index?
Is a cached index or a live search better for RAG?
Does SpecStream work with LangChain and LlamaIndex?
https://api.specstream.ai, and clients written for Tavily, Exa, Brave or Serper work by changing the base address, at $1 per 1,000 searches.Does SpecStream have an API?
https://api.specstream.ai/mcp.Sources
SpecStream wrote this page. Each rival figure comes from that company's own page.
- SpecStream pricingspecstream.ai/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- SpecStream for agentsspecstream.ai/agents.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- SpecStream benchmarksspecstream.ai/benchmarks, read Nov 12, 2026
- Oxylabs: Introducing Web Intelligence Indexoxylabs.io/blog/introducing-web-intelligence-index, read Nov 12, 2026
- Oxylabs pricingoxylabs.io/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- Oxylabs /Searchoxylabs.io/products/web-api/search, read Nov 12, 2026
- Tavily API creditsdocs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits, read Nov 12, 2026
- Exa pricingexa.ai/docs/admin/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026