Web Search Plus Provider Guide — Privacy, terms, pricing, capabilities

Standard self-serve contracts

Privacy & terms.

Explicit-only is routing, not privacy. These ratings cover the standard public contract unless an Enterprise override is stated. Search and Fetch/Extract are scored separately because ZDR often covers only one endpoint.

Provider privacy, terms, training, retention and zero-data-retention comparison
Provider	Search	Fetch / Extract	Training, retention & ZDR	Primary sources
Serper	Review	Review	No explicit Customer-Data training licence found, but activity and analytics data may support AI/ML improvement. No fixed query retention, public ZDR or public DPA found.	Terms Privacy
SerpBase	Caution	N/A	No explicit training licence found. Query text, locale, request metadata and IP data are logged without a published fixed retention period or ZDR.	Terms Privacy
Brave Search API	Caution	N/A	No training licence for Brave itself. Privacy policy (updated 2026-08-25): query logs are retained for at most 90 days; ZDR is available on Enterprise custom plans and must be activated. Terms (2026-09-01) §3(b)(i) bar storing or caching Search Results beyond transient storage and §3(b)(xiii) bar training AI models on results.	Terms Privacy ZDR
Tavily	Review	Review	Query Data may improve future responses. Terms (updated 2026-05-04) §6.5 allow Tavily and its providers to use and retain Customer Input for “AI Functionality” (generative research tools) to train AI models, and §9.2 grants a perpetual, irrevocable licence to Customer Input to improve the Services; the Terms contain no opt-out. The “Allow Use of Query Data” opt-out is described in a help article, but its default is still not stated. No fixed retention found. Nebius announced on 2026-02-10 that it will acquire Tavily.	Terms Privacy Opt-out
Querit	High risk	N/A	Terms §2 grant a perpetual, irrevocable licence to API-submitted content for improving the Services; the Privacy policy (2025-12-31) §2 says personal information may be processed to train AI/ML. No ZDR or fixed query retention found.	Terms Privacy
Linkup	High risk	High risk	Terms Art. 6.5 permit Client Data, including prompts, to be used for training and improvement. Linkup documents that ZDR “can be requested on demand. It is not enabled by default.”	Terms Privacy Data privacy
Exa	High risk	High risk	Privacy policy (2026-06-29): Query Data may be used, including for training and fine-tuning; public Terms also grant broad input/output improvement rights. ZDR is an Enterprise option (pricing page), not the self-serve default.	Terms Privacy ZDR
Firecrawl Cloud Self-hosted differs	Review	Review	Terms (revised 2026-10-07) §8.d grant an irrevocable, royalty-free licence to submitted content. The privacy policy (2024-12-26) lists caching, indexing and product improvement; no fixed API-content retention is published. Firecrawl documents Enterprise ZDR for scrape, crawl and search; confirm contractual activation, plan coverage and endpoint-specific terms before sensitive use. Self-hosting moves logs, queues, storage and LLM egress under operator control.	Terms Privacy ZDR Self-host
Parallel	High risk	High risk	Customer Terms §4(b) expressly permit Customer IP, including queries and outputs, to train and improve AI/ML models. A contrary FAQ is not the controlling contract. ZDR is Enterprise-only.	Customer Terms Privacy
You.com	Review	Review	The privacy policy (updated 2026-09-22) says You.com does not train or fine-tune its own models on prompts, files or outputs, and bars its LLM providers from doing so unless you opt in. The Terms (2024-08-27) §4.5 still allow using Content to “provide, maintain, train and improve the Services”, which sits in tension with that promise. No fixed self-serve retention period is published. Enterprise ZDR can cover Web Search `/v1/search` and Answer `/v1/answer` after activation, but not Contents/Extract or Research.	Terms Privacy ZDR
SearXNG Self-hosted	Caution	N/A	No central SaaS recipient: you control instance logs and retention. Queries still go to every enabled upstream engine; reverse-proxy logs, autocomplete, favicons and proxies add separate data paths.	Self-hosting Engines Egress
Keenable	Review	Review	Processes queries, fetch URLs, content and telemetry. No public no-training promise, fixed input retention, ZDR, DPA or complete subprocessor scope was verified for self-serve/keyless use; the Trust page could not be read.	Privacy Trust
DonSeTch Local stdio MCP	Review	Review	No DonSeTch cloud, but not no-egress: search engines receive queries and target sites receive fetches. Local browser/runtime state can persist data; no service DPA or ZDR exists. DonSeTch has optional Bright Data integrations (SERP provider / Web Unlocker); if you enable them, Bright Data becomes an additional recipient. AGPL-3.0-only; install separately.	Project License
Octen via Monid	High risk	N/A	Octen Terms (last updated 2026-02-05) §6.2 grant a perpetual licence to User Input and Output “including training our machine learning models”; the Privacy policy §C says de-identified or aggregated query data may train models unless an enterprise contract says otherwise. Monid is an additional broker/data recipient without publicly findable Terms, Privacy, retention or DPA pages.	Octen Terms Octen Privacy Monid API
TinyFish Explicit-only · BYOK	High risk	N/A in WSP	Use your own TinyFish account/API key; WSP does not provide, pool, proxy or share TinyFish credentials. Terms (effective 2026-08-17) allow Customer Data to train, fine-tune, evaluate and improve AI/ML models “subject to commercially reasonable safeguards”. The Search usage API exposes stored query details and results; no fixed deletion period is published. WSP integrates Search only and keeps it explicit-only.	Terms Privacy Usage records

Operational guidance, not legal advice. “Caution” means no explicit training licence was found but retention or recipients remain material; “Review” means the standard public contract is incomplete or ambiguous; “High risk” means standard terms expressly permit training or comparably broad use. Enterprise claims count only when activated and contractually binding for the exact endpoint.

Broad web defaultBrave

Docs & academicExa

Security & shopping SERPSerper

Cited extractLinkup

No-card starterTavily

Scrape fallbackFirecrawl

Starter creditYou.com

Local no-keyDonSeTch

🟢 Forever / recurringRecurring allowance, self-hosted, or currently free/keyless.

🟡 One-time / trialSignup credits you burn once, then pay.

⚪ DependsBilling belongs to another account.

🟢 Forever / recurring

Forever / recurring

Recurring allowance, self-hosted, or currently free/keyless. Still read the caveats: Brave and Parallel need a card; Keenable can change; SearXNG and DonSeTch need local infrastructure.

Tavily

TAVILY_API_KEY

search + extract + research

🟢 forever
1,000 API credits / month, recurring, no credit card.

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go $0.008 / credit; Project about $30/mo for 4,000 credits; higher plans reduce unit cost.
Best for: Convenient no-card starter for users who want search + extract in one account.
Watch out: Credits are not always equal to calls; deeper research-style features can consume more credits. Nebius announced on 2026-02-10 that it will acquire Tavily; Tavily says it will keep operating under its current brand (the site now shows “Tavily by Nebius”). The Terms updated 2026-05-04 allow training on Customer Input for AI Functionality and grant a perpetual licence to improve the Services (§6.5, §9.2); see the Privacy & Terms matrix. Keyless, rate-limited Search/Extract exists (header X-Tavily-Access-Mode: keyless).

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source Nebius

Firecrawl

FIRECRAWL_API_KEY

search + extract + JS/crawl

🟢 forever
1,000 credits / month, recurring — no cost, no card, no hassle.

Pricing: Hobby $16–19/mo for 5k credits; Standard about $83–99/mo for 100k; Growth about $333–399/mo for 500k; Scale $599–749/mo for 1,000,000 credits. Search costs 2 credits / 10 results; scrape/crawl/map are commonly 1 credit per page/call.
Best for: Best extraction/scraping fallback, especially JS-heavy pages and crawl workflows.
Watch out: Excellent for extraction; less ideal as the main cheap search backend because search burns credits quickly. Firecrawl launched a keyless REST tier on 2026-06-16 (search, scrape; per-IP daily caps, numbers unpublished). /search has returned query-relevant highlights by default since 2026-07-22. Terms revised 2026-10-07 include an irrevocable, royalty-free licence to submitted content (§8.d); see the Privacy & Terms matrix.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source keyless

Brave Search

BRAVE_API_KEY

search + news + local

🟢 forever / card caveat
$5 in free credits every month, recurring (replaced each month, not carried over).

Pricing: Search $5 / 1k requests (the Search plan includes both Web Search and LLM Context); Answers $4 / 1k queries plus $5 / M tokens; autosuggest/spellcheck priced separately.
Best for: Independent broad web index plus news, images and videos.
Watch out: Brave docs require a payment card because API usage can generate costs. Treat as recurring free credits, not no-payment onboarding. Queries are limited to 600 characters and 75 words. The Terms bar storing or caching Search Results beyond transient storage, so do not plan on keeping results in your own index.

Search ✅ · Extract —source source

Querit

QUERIT_API_KEY

search (multilingual, real-time)

🟢 forever
1,000 free searches / month on the Free plan.

Pricing: Search API $4 / 1,000 requests; Enterprise custom. Paid activation requires valid payment info. Free plan: 1 QPS, 10 results max; paid: 10 QPS, 20 results max. A separate Querit Contents API ($1 / 1,000 pages, page extraction) exists.
Best for: Multilingual / real-time search candidate.
Watch out: WSP exposes it as search-only. Querit's public privacy terms permit personal data to train, develop and improve AI/ML, and API-submitted content receives a perpetual, irrevocable improvement licence; see the Privacy & Terms matrix before use. WSP does not use the Contents API.

Search ✅ · Extract —source source

SearXNG

searxng.base_url

search (meta, self-hosted)

🟢 self-hosted
Free if you self-host; no vendor API bill.

Pricing: Open-source/self-hosted. Your cost is the server, maintenance and upstream engine reliability.
Best for: Self-hosting control, no central SaaS vendor account and metasearch across selected engines.
Watch out: Self-hosted does not mean no-egress: every enabled engine still receives the query. Public instances are fragile and not production-grade. SearXNG has no tagged releases (rolling). In WSP 3.x it is the backbone of the self_hosted profile (legacy SEARXNG_INSTANCE_URL still supported).

Search ✅ · Extract —source source

Keenable

KEENABLE_API_KEY

search + extract

🟢 keyless rate-limited / authenticated allowance
Keyless public pool plus an API key with 100,000 free requests/month, recurring.

Pricing: Unauthenticated: 1,000 requests/hour, max 10 rps per IP, not credit-metered. Authenticated: 100,000 requests/month, recurring, 10 rps per organization; then $4 / 1,000 requests, or $1 / 1,000 at 100 RPS+. 402 when the allowance and purchased credits are spent. Prices are set per organization. Search modes are realtime and pro (pro is the default).
Best for: Opt-in keyless fallback and an independent search/fetch endpoint.
Watch out: Authenticated use is no longer “currently free.” Keyless mode needs KEENABLE_ALLOW_PUBLIC=1 (or keenable.allow_public: true); without it Keenable does not auto-route in WSP.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅pricing credits limits

DonSeTch

DONSETCH_BIN

search + extract · local stdio MCP

🟢 local / no provider API key
Separately installed local stdio process; no provider request fee.

Pricing: Open source under AGPL-3.0-only. Your cost is the machine, bandwidth, optional browser runtime and maintenance.
Best for: Local key-free metasearch, optional browser-backed extraction and a fallback outside commercial provider APIs.
Watch out: Not zero-setup, offline or unlimited. Engine availability, anti-bot behavior and latency vary. WSP keeps DonSeTch explicit-only unless you deliberately enable auto-routing. DonSeTch releases very often (latest 4.10.2 at the 2026-10-25 check), so newer versions may not be tested. Optional Bright Data integrations exist in DonSeTch (SERP provider / Web Unlocker); if you enable them, Bright Data becomes an extra recipient.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅ · works with DonSeTch 4.7.0 and newer (tested 4.10.2)DonSeTch

Linkup

LINKUP_API_KEY

search + fetch/extract + citations

🟢 recurring credits / eligible accounts
Professional-email signups receive $20 credit; eligible accounts are topped back up to $20 each month.

Pricing: Search $0.005–$0.006 / request for standard/fast; deep $0.05–$0.055; flash depth (alpha, since September 2026) $0.005. Billing is in USD since May 2026 (1:1 from EUR). Fetch: standard without JS $0.001, standard with JS $0.005, pro without JS $0.005, pro with JS $0.01; a schema adds $0.001. Research $0.25–$2.50 / request. Linkup also has a closed-beta /extract (structured extraction agent, minimum $10 balance); WSP uses /fetch.
Best for: Clean cited extraction, sourced answers, low-cost fetch.
Watch out: Eligibility matters, and Linkup's standard Terms permit Client Data including prompts to be used for training. Linkup documents ZDR as available “on demand. It is not enabled by default.” See the Privacy & Terms matrix.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

Exa

EXA_API_KEY

search + extract (semantic)

🟢 $10 / month
No payment method required. Free tier: $10 credits on signup, reset to $10 on the 1st of every month (no rollover), plus a one-time $10 onboarding bonus after completing dashboard onboarding.

Pricing: instant search $4 / 1k (cheapest); fast/auto $7 / 1k; deep-lite/deep $12 / 1k, deep-reasoning $15 / 1k; Contents $1 / 1k pages; Answer $5 / 1k; extra results above 10 cost $1 / 1k.
Best for: Neural/semantic discovery, similar pages, AI-optimized contents.
Watch out: Exa's privacy policy (2026-06-29) permits Query Data to be used for training and fine-tuning. Enterprise ZDR is not the self-serve default.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

Parallel

PARALLEL_API_KEY

search + extract + citations

🟢 recurring / card caveat
$5 free credits per month for eligible organizations with a credit card on file. “5,000 requests” is what $5 buys at fast/turbo prices, not a separate quota. The pricing page mentions up to $80 signup credit (not verified in the docs).

Pricing: Search turbo/fast $1 / 1k requests with 10 results; basic/advanced $5 / 1k. Extra results $1 / 1k. Extract $1 / 1k URLs. WSP defaults Search to fast (Parallel’s own API default is advanced). Task API $5–$2,400 / 1k runs.
Best for: Ranked URLs, compressed excerpts, direct page extraction and agent-friendly citations.
Watch out: Standard Customer Terms expressly permit queries and outputs to train and improve AI/ML models. The Privacy & Terms matrix therefore rates both Search and Extract high risk. A configured key still joins automatic routing (unless you set auto_allow.parallel=false) but, since 5.0, is no longer picked first.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source free tier

🟡 One-time / trial credits

One-time / trial credits

Good for trying WSP quickly. You burn the credit, then pricing matters.

You.com

YOU_API_KEY

search + extract + research

🟡 one-time
$100 free API credit on a key (a card requirement is not confirmed). You.com’s keyless MCP free plan (up to 100 queries/day, no card) is not the WSP path.

Pricing: Search $5 / 1k calls; Contents $1 / 1k pages; Answer API $5 / 1k. Research is tiered per 1k: lite $12, standard $50, deep $100, exhaustive $450, frontier $1,200; Finance Research deep $110, exhaustive $500.
Best for: Large starter credit with search, contents/extract and research-style endpoints.
Watch out: WSP uses YOU_API_KEY, not You.com’s no-key Free plan. The privacy policy (updated 2026-09-22) says You.com does not train or fine-tune its own models on prompts, files or outputs, and bars its LLM providers from doing so unless you opt in; the Terms (2024-08-27) §4.5 still allow using Content to “provide, maintain, train and improve the Services”. No fixed self-serve retention period is published. Enterprise ZDR covers Search and Answer, not Contents/Extract or Research.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

Serper

SERPER_API_KEY

search + maps/news/shopping/scholar + extract

🟡 one-time
2,500 free credits, no credit card.

Pricing: Volume packs: $50 for 50k credits ($1.00 / 1k, 50 qps) up to $3,750 for 12.5M credits ($0.30 / 1k, 300 qps); credits valid 6 months.
Best for: Cheap, fast Google-like SERP with rich verticals.
Watch out: Extraction runs via Serper’s scrape endpoint; check credit use for scraping in the dashboard, and consider a dedicated extract provider for heavy extraction workloads.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source

SerpBase

SERPBASE_API_KEY

search + maps/shopping/scholar

🟡 one-time
100 free searches to start, no card; no-key preview capped to 5 organic links.

Pricing: Starter Boost is a $3 / month subscription (10,000 credits, $0.30 / 1k). Prepaid packs from $10 for 20k ($0.50 / 1k) to $1,000 for 3.3M ($0.30 / 1k) have no calendar expiry. Pro Monthly is $100 / month for 400,000 credits ($0.25 / 1k).
Best for: Very cheap Google-like SERP fallback.
Watch out: Search-only in WSP; explicit/fallback-only rather than a complete search+extract stack. Callable endpoints are web, maps, shopping, jobs, scholar, books, finance and autocomplete; Images, News and Videos are “in development” per the docs. Failed executed requests may still be charged.

Search ✅ · Extract —source source

⚪ Brokered access

Brokered access / no free-tier claim

Active source search whose API access and billing run through another service.

Octen via Monid

MONID_API_KEY

source search · explicit-only

⚪ no free-tier claim
Monid API key and wallet balance required.

Pricing: Access and billing use Monid's prepaid wallet: per-call/per-result pricing, no subscriptions; the Monid homepage says new accounts start with $1.00. For context, direct Octen pricing (WSP goes through Monid) is a $5 free signup balance and Web Search API $1 / 1k calls (promo; list $5).
Best for: Explicit source search with ranked links, highlights, native recency and include/exclude-domain filters.
Watch out: Octen's standard Terms expressly allow ML training on input/output; Monid adds a second recipient without verifiable public legal pages. Explicit-only does not fix that privacy risk. Monid's Terms and Privacy pages are still not publicly findable.

Search ✅ · Extract — · explicit-onlyAPI source Terms

TinyFish

TINYFISH_API_KEY

source search · explicit-only

⚪ search does not consume credits
Your own TinyFish account and API key are required; WSP never supplies or shares one.

Pricing: Search requests do not consume TinyFish credits. The pricing page lists Search at 30 requests/min · 500 requests/hour, $0.00 per request. The docs say Search is free up to 12,000 requests/day, after which a positive wallet balance is required. Verify current account eligibility before relying on it.
Best for: Direct ranked web/news results with snippets, native freshness, locale and domain filtering.
Watch out: TinyFish's standard Terms permit Customer Data to train, fine-tune, evaluate and improve AI/ML models. WSP integrates Search only, omits purpose/fetch, and keeps it explicit-only — that reduces scope, not the contractual risk. The Terms (effective 2026-08-17) allow this “subject to commercially reasonable safeguards”.

Search ✅ · Extract — · explicit-onlyAPI Terms Privacy

Capability matrix

Search, extract, free tier.

Fast scan for which keys unlock which WSP capability.

Provider search, extract, free-tier and starting-price comparison
Provider	Search	Extract	Free tier	Headline free	Starting price
Tavily `TAVILY_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟢 forever	1,000 API credits / month, recurring, no credit card.	Pay-as-you-go $0.008 / credit
Firecrawl `FIRECRAWL_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟢 forever	1,000 credits / month, recurring — no cost, no card, no hassle.	Hobby $16–19/mo for 5k credits
Brave Search `BRAVE_API_KEY`	✅	—	🟢 forever / card caveat	$5 in free credits every month, recurring.	Search $5 / 1k requests
Querit `QUERIT_API_KEY`	✅	—	🟢 forever	1,000 free searches / month on the Free plan.	Search API $4 / 1,000 requests
SearXNG `searxng.base_url`	✅	—	🟢 self-hosted	Free if you self-host; no vendor API bill.	Open-source/self-hosted. Your cost is the server, maintenance and upstream engine reliability.
Keenable `KEENABLE_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟢 keyless / authenticated allowance	Keyless public pool plus 100,000 authenticated requests/month, recurring.	Unauthenticated: 1,000/hour, 10 rps/IP, unmetered. Authenticated: 100,000 requests/month, then $4 / 1,000 requests ($1 / 1,000 at 100 RPS+).
DonSeTch `DONSETCH_BIN`	✅	✅	🟢 local / no provider key	Separate local stdio MCP process; no provider request fee.	Your machine, bandwidth, browser runtime and maintenance.
Octen via Monid `MONID_API_KEY`	✅	—	⚪ no free-tier claim	Monid API key and wallet balance required.	Per-call/per-result via Monid; direct Octen Web Search API $1 / 1k calls (promo; list $5).
TinyFish `TINYFISH_API_KEY`	✅	—	⚪ account required	Search requests do not consume credits; API access required.	Pricing page: $0.00 per request, 30 requests/min · 500/hour; docs: free up to 12,000/day, then wallet balance.
You.com `YOU_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟡 one-time	$100 free API credit on a key (card requirement not confirmed); keyless MCP free plan: up to 100 queries/day, no card.	Search $5 / 1k calls; Answer $5 / 1k
Parallel `PARALLEL_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟢 recurring / card caveat	$5 free credits / month with a card on file (5,000 requests is what $5 buys at fast/turbo prices); pricing page mentions up to $80 signup credit.	Search turbo/fast $1 / 1k; basic/advanced $5 / 1k
Serper `SERPER_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟡 one-time	2,500 free credits, no credit card.	Volume packs: $1.00 / 1k at 50k credits down to $0.30 / 1k at 12.5M credits
Exa `EXA_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟢 $10 / month	$10 credits on signup, reset to $10 on the 1st of each month, plus a one-time $10 onboarding bonus; no card.	`instant` search $4 / 1k; fast/auto $7 / 1k
SerpBase `SERPBASE_API_KEY`	✅	—	🟡 one-time	100 free searches to start, no card; no-key preview capped to 5 organic links.	Starter Boost $3 / month for 10k credits ($0.30 / 1k). Prepaid packs $0.50–$0.30 / 1k, no calendar expiry. Pro Monthly $100 / month for 400k ($0.25 / 1k).
Linkup `LINKUP_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟢 recurring credits / eligible accounts	Professional-email signups receive $20 credit; eligible accounts are topped back up to $20 each month.	Search $0.005–$0.006 / request for standard/fast

Perplexity and Kilo were removed in Web Search Plus 5.0.0.

Search providers

Start with one. Add more when you need them.

Web Search Plus works with 15 search providers and can read pages through 9 of them. You only need one provider to get started.

Automatic routing picks the first provider by query type: Brave for general, news, local and community queries; Exa for docs and academic; Serper for security and shopping. Fallback continues through Brave, Serper, Exa, Tavily, then the configured priority. Set your own order with setup.py config set-order exa,serper,brave or “Provider order” in Hermes Desktop. setup.py setup asks for the starter providers Brave, Serper, Exa and Linkup (search) / Linkup (extract); without any key it offers Keenable’s keyless public tier (default no).

Broad web defaultBraveNeeds a card ($5 monthly credit); Terms bar storing results beyond transient storage.

Docs & academicExaStandard terms permit training and fine-tuning on Query Data.

Security & shoppingSerper2,500 one-time free credits; no fixed query retention or public ZDR found.

Cited extractLinkupFast cited fetch, but standard Terms permit training on Client Data.

No-card starterTavilyRecurring monthly credits; review the Query Data opt-out and the 2026-05-04 Terms before sensitive use.

Scrape fallbackFirecrawlStrong JS extraction; Cloud retention and exact ZDR scope need review.

Starter creditYou.comEnterprise Search ZDR does not cover self-serve Contents/Extract.

Local key-freeDonSeTchExplicit-only metasearch + page reading through a local stdio MCP process.

Compare privacy, terms + pricing →Pricing snapshot: 2026-10-10 · privacy/terms audit: 2026-10-10.

search + extract search only

Search + extract · 9 providers

Tavily research search + extract Exa semantic discovery search + extract Linkup grounded citations search + extract Firecrawl scrape-ready content search + extract Parallel joins auto when keyed · fast search search + extract You.com web + code search + extract Keenable independent index search + extract Serper Google-style results + news/extract search + extract DonSeTch local explicit-only stdio search + extract

Search only · 6 providers

Brave broad web Querit multilingual SerpBase Google SERP SearXNG self-hosted Octen via Monid explicit-only TinyFish explicit privacy trade-off

Octen via MonidOcten supplies the source-search results; Monid provides API access and billing. It stays off by default and runs only when you request provider="octen" or deliberately opt it into routing.

TinyFishDirect source search with your own TinyFish API key, but standard Terms permit training and fine-tuning on Customer Data. It stays explicit-only; read the Privacy & Terms matrix before use.

Local & keyless paths

Local and keyless provider boundaries

No commercial provider key does not always mean local. Choose the boundary you actually want: a self-hosted search endpoint, a local Search + Extract sidecar, or an opt-in public keyless service.

Dlocal stdio · explicit

DonSeTch

Local metasearch and optional browser-backed extraction through a separately installed stdio MCP process.

SearchExtractBrowser / PDF / OCR

Runs: On your machine as a local stdio MCP process.
Egress: Public search engines and the target websites you fetch.
Routing: Explicit-only by default; never silently added to auto or fallback.

DONSETCH_BIN=/absolute/path/to/donsetch

DonSeTch · independently installed AGPL-3.0-only local provider

Sself-hosted · auto-ready

SearXNG

Your own metasearch endpoint for broad web discovery without a commercial WSP provider account.

SearchExtractMetasearch

Runs: At an endpoint you operate and configure in WSP.
Egress: Upstream search engines selected by your SearXNG instance.
Routing: Included in the self_hosted automatic search pool.

searxng.base_url=https://sx.example

Search-only in WSP · your infrastructure, policy and availability

Kremote · keyless opt-in

Keenable

A public Search + Extract endpoint that can work without an API key, but does not run locally.

SearchExtractPublic tier

Runs: As a remote public service operated by Keenable.
Egress: Your query or URL is sent to an unauthenticated third-party endpoint.
Routing: Off until you explicitly enable the public keyless tier.

KEENABLE_ALLOW_PUBLIC=1

Per-IP limits and no SLA · convenient fallback, not local infrastructure

Local ≠ offlineSearXNG and DonSeTch keep orchestration and compute under your control, but searches and fetches still reach the public web from your machine. Compare operating cost, privacy and limits in the provider guide →