🔍 Best Search APIs for Agents

The best search APIs for AI agents to use during research, retrieval-augmented generation, and tool discovery. Rated on API quality, free tier, and agent-native design. Ranked by Agent Native Score — a composite of discoverability, onboarding friction, agent tooling quality, reliability, and pricing model.

Exa
MCP serverFree tier
88

AI-native web search API. Semantic and keyword search that returns structured data: titles, URLs, text highlights, published dates. Built for LLM and agent consumption.

Discovery
85
Account creation
90
Agent tooling
90
Reliability
80
Pricing model
85
Built for agents from the ground up. Semantic search returns structured data (title, author, date, text). MCP server available. Free tier: 1,000 searches/month. No domain verification required.
Tavily
MCP serverFree tier
87

Search API optimized for AI agents. Returns clean, LLM-ready results with optional raw content. Purpose-built for agentic research tasks.

Discovery
85
Account creation
90
Agent tooling
88
Reliability
80
Pricing model
82
Purpose-built search for AI agents. Clean JSON responses, configurable depth, domain filtering. MCP server available. Free tier: 1,000 credits/month. Used by LangChain and AutoGPT.
Algolia
MCP serverFree tier
78

Search-as-a-service. Typo-tolerant instant search with faceting and ranking. MCP server, REST API, and client libraries for 20+ languages.

Discovery
82
Account creation
80
Agent tooling
75
Reliability
85
Pricing model
68
MCP server available. Free tier: 10k searches and 10k records/month. Clean API: upload records, search, filter. Fast and highly reliable. Good for agents building search over their own data.

Query this registry from your agent

Add the Agent Native Registry MCP server to get real-time scores and comparisons while your agent works.

claude mcp add agentnative -- npx -y agent-native-registry