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/fine-tuning licence found. Standard query logs are retained for up to 90 days; Search API ZDR is Enterprise/Custom and must be activated.	Terms Privacy ZDR
Tavily	Review	Review	Query Data may improve future responses. The “Allow Use of Query Data” opt-out is relevant, but its default state and a general no-training promise are not publicly clear; no fixed retention found.	Terms Privacy Opt-out
Querit	High risk	N/A	Privacy terms expressly permit personal data to train, develop and improve AI/ML; API content also receives a broad perpetual improvement licence. No ZDR or fixed query retention found.	Terms Privacy
Linkup	High risk	High risk	Standard Terms permit Client Data, including prompts, to be used for training and improvement. Public ZDR/BYOC claims do not override that clause without a signed, controlling contract.	Terms Privacy Data privacy
Exa	High risk	High risk	Query Data may be used for training and fine-tuning; public Terms also grant broad input/output improvement rights. ZDR is an Enterprise option, not the self-serve default.	Terms Privacy ZDR
Firecrawl Cloud Self-hosted differs	Review	Review	Cloud policy covers caching, indexing, analytics and product improvement; no explicit training licence was found, but 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 expressly permit Customer IP, including queries and outputs, to train and improve AI/ML models. A contrary FAQ is not the controlling contract.	Customer Terms Privacy
You.com	Review	Review	Self-serve terms lack a standard no-training or fixed-retention promise. Enterprise ZDR can cover Web Search `/v1/search` 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.	Privacy Trust
Hound Local MCP	Review	Review	No Hound cloud, but not no-egress: search engines receive queries and target sites receive fetches. Local browser state and SQLite/WAL cache can persist data; no service DPA or ZDR exists.	Project License
Octen via Monid	High risk	N/A	Octen grants a perpetual input/output licence that expressly includes ML training. Monid is an additional broker/data recipient without verifiable public Terms, Privacy, retention or DPA pages at audit time.	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. Standard Terms allow Customer Data to train, fine-tune, evaluate and improve AI/ML models. 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
Perplexity API Not active in WSP	Tech reject	Tech reject	Strong contractual no-training clause and documented Chat Completions ZDR, but WSP has no verified source-only endpoint. Legally promising does not make answer synthesis source-only.	API Terms Privacy & security
Kilo / Perplexity bridge Not active in WSP	High risk	N/A	Kilo adds another recipient and broad perpetual improvement rights; downstream model terms still apply. WSP also rejects the path because it lacks a verified source-only endpoint.	Terms Privacy

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.

No-card starterTavily

Cited extractLinkup

Extract fallbackFirecrawl

Starter creditYou.com

Cheap SERPSerper / SerpBase

Local no-keyHound

Brokered explicitOcten via Monid

Explicit privacy trade-offTinyFish

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

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

🔴 NoneNo durable free API tier found.

⚪ DependsBilling belongs to another account.

🟢 Forever / recurring

Forever / recurring

Recurring allowance, self-hosted, or currently free/keyless. Still read the caveats: Brave needs a card; Keenable can change; SearXNG and Hound 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.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

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. 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.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

Brave Search

BRAVE_API_KEY

search + news + local

🟢 forever / card caveat
$5 in free credits every month, recurring.

Pricing: Search $5 / 1k requests; Answers $4 / 1k queries plus token charges; 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.

Search ✅ · Extract —source source

Querit

QUERIT_API_KEY

search (multilingual, real-time)

🟢 forever
1,000 API requests / calendar month on the Free tier.

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go US$4 / 1,000 API requests; Enterprise custom. Paid activation requires valid payment info.
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; see the Privacy & Terms matrix before use.

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. 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

🟢 currently free / keyless
Keyless public tier plus optional API key; docs say API usage is currently free.

Pricing: Unauthenticated: 1,000 requests/hour, max 10 rps per IP. Authenticated removes hourly cap but keeps 10 rps/org. No public paid price list yet.
Best for: Zero-setup WSP fallback and independent search/fetch endpoint.
Watch out: “Currently free” can change. Keyless mode requires the explicit opt-in KEENABLE_ALLOW_PUBLIC=1 (or keenable.allow_public: true); without it Keenable does not auto-route in WSP.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

Hound

HOUND_MCP_URL

search + extract · local MCP sidecar

🟢 local / no provider API key
Separately installed loopback service; no provider request fee.

Pricing: Open source under MIT. Your cost is the machine, bandwidth, optional browser runtime and maintenance.
Best for: Local key-free metasearch, 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 Hound explicit-only unless you deliberately enable auto-routing.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅ · tested with 11.1.6Hound / Master Fetch Bishesh Bhandari

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. Fetch $0.001 without JS, $0.005 with JS. Research $0.25–$2.50 / request.
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. ZDR/BYOC requires a controlling contract; see the Privacy & Terms matrix.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

🟡 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 to get started.

Pricing: Search $5 / 1k calls; Contents $1 / 1k pages; Research Lite $12 / 1k calls.
Best for: Generous starter key with search, contents/extract and research-style endpoints.
Watch out: One-time credit, not a permanent monthly free tier. Self-serve has no standard no-training or fixed-retention promise; Enterprise Search ZDR does not cover Contents/Extract.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

Parallel

PARALLEL_API_KEY

search + extract + citations

🟢 recurring
1,000 requests / month free, plus up to $80 signup credit and $5 free credits / month.

Pricing: Search $5 / 1k requests with 10 results; +$1 / 1k additional page results/excerpts. Extract $1 / 1k URLs. Chat $5 / 1k; Task API ranges from $5 to $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.

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: $1.00 / 1k at 50k credits down to $0.30 / 1k at 12.5M credits; credits valid 6 months.
Best for: Cheap, fast Google-like SERP with rich verticals.
Watch out: Extraction runs via Serper’s scrape endpoint and consumes credits like search calls; heavy extraction workloads may fit a dedicated extract provider better.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source

Exa

EXA_API_KEY

search + extract (semantic)

🟡 credit-based / caveated
$10 one-time onboarding credit; +$7/month only when a payment method is on file.

Pricing: Search $7 / 1k requests; Contents $1 / 1k pages; Deep Search $12 / 1k; Answer $5 / 1k.
Best for: Neural/semantic discovery, similar pages, AI-optimized contents.
Watch out: Exa's standard privacy terms permit Query Data to be used for training and fine-tuning. Enterprise ZDR is not the self-serve default.

Search ✅ · Extract ✅source source

SerpBase

SERPBASE_API_KEY

search + images/news/maps

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

Pricing: Starter Boost $3 / 10k expires after one month. Standard prepaid packs run about $0.50–$0.20 / 1k and do not expire.
Best for: Very cheap Google-like SERP fallback.
Watch out: Search-only in WSP; explicit/fallback-only rather than a complete search+extract stack.

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; see Monid for current pricing and terms.
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.

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. Published Search limits start at 30 requests/minute for Free and PAYG accounts; 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.

Search ✅ · Extract — · explicit-onlyAPI Terms Privacy

Not registered in WSP 3.x

Pricing context only: since WSP 3.0 these answer endpoints are not registered (source-only charter). Configured keys are ignored, not deleted — they are not part of the 15-search / 9-extract surface.

Perplexity Sonar API

PERPLEXITY_API_KEY

search + cited answers

🔴 none
No durable free API tier found.

Pricing: Search/Sonar request fees roughly $5–$22 / 1k depending context/model, plus token pricing.
Best for: Search-grounded answers with Perplexity synthesis and citations.
Watch out: Not usable through WSP 3.x at all (source-only charter; keys are ignored). Shown for market/pricing context only.

Search — (not in WSP 3.x) · Extract —source source

Not registered in WSP 3.x

Also unregistered: account-bridged

Billing belongs to another account, and the bridge endpoint is likewise not registered in WSP 3.x.

Kilo Code — Perplexity bridge

KILOCODE_API_KEY

search + answers

⚪ depends
Depends on your Kilo account and billing.

Pricing: Usage is billed through the configured Kilo/provider account; no standalone WSP free tier.
Best for: Convenience if you already use Kilo Code and want Perplexity-style answers through that account.
Watch out: Not usable through WSP 3.x at all; billing context only.

Search — (not in WSP 3.x) · Extract —source source

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 API requests / calendar month on the Free tier.	Pay-as-you-go US$4 / 1,000 API 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`	✅	✅	🟢 currently free / keyless	Keyless public tier plus optional API key; docs say API usage is currently free.	Unauthenticated: 1,000 requests/hour, max 10 rps per IP. Authenticated removes hourly cap but keeps 10 rps/org. No public paid price list yet.
Hound `HOUND_MCP_URL`	✅	✅	🟢 local / no provider key	Separate loopback MCP sidecar; 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.	See Monid for current pricing and terms.
TinyFish `TINYFISH_API_KEY`	✅	—	⚪ account required	Search requests do not consume credits; API access required.	Published Search limit starts at 30 requests/minute.
You.com `YOU_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟡 one-time	$100 free API credit to get started.	Search $5 / 1k calls
Parallel `PARALLEL_API_KEY`	✅	✅	🟢 recurring	1,000 requests / month free, plus up to $80 signup credit and $5 free credits / month.	Search $5 / 1k requests with 10 results
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`	✅	✅	🟡 credit-based / caveated	$10 one-time onboarding credit; +$7/month only when a payment method is on file.	Search $7 / 1k requests
SerpBase `SERPBASE_API_KEY`	✅	—	🟡 one-time	100 free searches to start, no card; no-key preview capped to 5 organic links.	Starter Boost $3 / 10k expires after one month. Standard prepaid packs run about $0.50–$0.20 / 1k and do not expire.
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 Sonar API `PERPLEXITY_API_KEY`	— not in WSP 3.x	—	🔴 none	No durable free API tier found.	Search/Sonar request fees roughly $5–$22 / 1k depending context/model, plus token pricing.
Kilo Code — Perplexity bridge `KILOCODE_API_KEY`	— not in WSP 3.x	—	⚪ depends	Depends on your Kilo account and billing.	Usage is billed through the configured Kilo/provider account