AI Web Search — Live SERP API for AI Agents, RAG & Grounding (Tavily / Exa / SerpAPI Alternative, No API Key)

Give it a query, get clean, ranked web results your LLM can actually use. AI Web Search is a fast, keyless live search API built for AI agents, RAG and grounding — a practical Tavily / Exa / Brave Search / SerpAPI alternative. Send one query or a batch of a hundred and receive structured results — title, URL, snippet, source domain and rank — pulled live from the web, with an optional Markdown copy of each result page attached for instant grounding.

Large language models have a knowledge cutoff and hallucinate about anything recent. This Actor fixes that: it hands your agent fresh, real search results with sources it can cite, instead of guesses. No API key, no browser, no rate-limit headaches — just search.

🏆 Why this AI web search Actor?

12 fields per result · up to 100 queries per run · dual engine (DuckDuckGo + Bing fallback) · optional Markdown page content for RAG · direct HTTP, no browser · export to JSON / CSV / Excel. The unofficial keyless search API for agents that need to ground answers in the live web — one charge per returned result.

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✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• 🔎 Live web search — send a query, get back the top-ranked results the search engines are serving right now, not stale training data.
• 🧠 Built for AI agents & RAG — predictable, flat schema (title, URL, snippet, source, rank) that drops straight into a prompt, a tool call, or a vector store.
• 🛡️ Resilient dual engine — DuckDuckGo HTML is the primary source; if it returns nothing, the Actor automatically falls back to Bing, so you get results, not empty responses.
• 📝 Grounding built in — enable Include page content and each result carries the page's main text as clean Markdown (content + contentWordCount), ready to paste into a grounding prompt.
• 📚 Batch queries — fire up to 100 queries in a single run with configurable concurrency (1–10 in parallel).
• 🌍 Region & language control — us-en, uk-en, de-de, fr-fr, es-es and more, plus a safe-search toggle.
• 🔑 Keyless — no Tavily, Exa, Brave, Bing or SerpAPI key. Runs on plain HTTP with Apify's proxy.
• 🤖 Agent-native (MCP + pay-per-event) — one charge per returned result, so an AI agent can discover the Actor, search, and reason over the output with no account setup.
• ⚡ Fast & cheap — direct HTTP extraction on a small container; no headless Chrome, no idle cost.

🚀 Quick start (3 steps)

1. Configure — type one or more queries into Search queries (batch list) or drop a single query into Single query. Set Max results per query (default 10).
2. Run — click Start. The Actor fans out your queries, ranks each result, and streams rows into your dataset.
3. Get your data — open the Output tab and export to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or read it live via the Apify API / MCP.

💡 Turn on Include page content if you want each result page's main text as Markdown for grounding — great for RAG, slightly slower (one fetch per result).

📥 Input

Give the Actor at least one query — either the queries batch list or the single query field. Everything else is optional.

Example — ground an agent on a fresh topic

{
  "queries": ["what is the model context protocol", "MCP server security best practices 2026"],
  "maxResults": 10,
  "includeContent": true,
  "region": "us-en"
}

Example — batch research questions (ranked sources only)

{
  "queries": [
    "best open source vector databases 2026",
    "RAG chunking strategies compared",
    "hybrid search BM25 vs embeddings"
  ],
  "maxResults": 15,
  "concurrency": 5,
  "region": "us-en"
}

Example — single localized query

{
  "query": "beste günstige elektroautos 2026",
  "maxResults": 20,
  "region": "de-de",
  "safeSearch": true
}

Field	Type	Description
queries	array	One or more search queries. Batch up to 100. Use this or query.
query	string	A single search query. Use this or queries.
maxResults	integer	Ranked results to return per query, 1–30 (default 10).
includeContent	boolean	Fetch each result page and attach its main content as clean Markdown (content). Slower; adds one fetch per result.
region	string	Region / language code, e.g. us-en, uk-en, de-de, fr-fr, es-es.
safeSearch	boolean	Filter explicit results (default true).
concurrency	integer	How many queries to run in parallel, 1–10 (default 3).
useApifyProxy	boolean	Route requests through Apify datacenter proxy (recommended, avoids per-IP rate limits).
proxyGroups	array	Advanced: override proxy group, e.g. RESIDENTIAL. Empty = datacenter (AUTO).

📤 Output

One row per search result — 12 fields, exportable to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML. Here is a trimmed sample record:

{
  "query": "what is the model context protocol",
  "rank": 1,
  "engine": "duckduckgo",
  "title": "Model Context Protocol — An open standard for AI tools",
  "url": "https://modelcontextprotocol.io",
  "displayUrl": "modelcontextprotocol.io",
  "source": "modelcontextprotocol.io",
  "snippet": "MCP is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs...",
  "content": "# Model Context Protocol\n\nMCP is an open standard that lets AI applications connect to tools and data sources...",
  "contentWordCount": 812,
  "error": null,
  "fetchedAt": "2026-07-06T12:00:00.000Z"
}

When Include page content is off, content and contentWordCount are null and you get pure ranked SERP rows.

💡 Use cases

• RAG & grounding — give an LLM fresh, citable sources instead of stale training data, with the page text already as Markdown.
• AI agents — a "search the web" tool an agent can call mid-conversation and pay per result, no key provisioning.
• Research automation — batch dozens of questions and collect ranked sources in one run.
• Answer engines & chatbots — power a bot that answers with links and citations, not hallucinations.
• Monitoring & discovery — track what ranks for a topic over time, or surface fresh pages on a subject.
• Fact-checking pipelines — pull top sources for a claim and let a downstream model reconcile them.

👥 Who uses it

AI engineers & agent builders · RAG / LLM app developers · data scientists doing research automation · founders shipping answer engines and chatbots · growth & SEO teams tracking live rankings · analysts who need cited, up-to-date sources at scale.

💰 Pricing

This Actor runs on Apify's pay-per-event model — you pay one charge per returned result, with no monthly fee and no idle cost. That makes it ideal for AI agents that search on demand: pay only for the results you actually get. Try it on the free tier first, then scale up. See the Pricing tab on this page for the current rate.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a Tavily / Exa / Brave Search / SerpAPI alternative? Yes. It covers the core "AI web search / grounding" job those APIs are used for — ranked results plus optional page content — without their API keys. You run it on Apify and pay per result.

Do I need an API key or a login? No. It's fully keyless and works out of the box with Apify's datacenter proxy. No search-engine account, no API key — only an Apify account.

Can I search without an API or a browser? Yes. There's no headless browser and no third-party search API involved — the Actor pulls results over direct HTTP. That's what keeps it fast and cheap.

Where do the results come from? DuckDuckGo HTML first, with an automatic Bing fallback for resilience — so you get the cleanest available results instead of empty responses.

Can it return page content, not just snippets? Yes — enable Include page content and each result carries the page's main content as clean Markdown (with a contentWordCount), ideal for RAG and grounding.

How much data can I get? Batch up to 100 queries per run, each returning up to 30 ranked results — hundreds to thousands of rows per run, with configurable concurrency to control speed.

How do I export the results to CSV or JSON? Run the Actor, then export the dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel or XML from the Apify console, or pull it live through the Apify API / MCP.

Can I search in other languages and regions? Yes. Set the Region / language field, e.g. uk-en, de-de, fr-fr, es-es.

Is it legal to use? The Actor returns publicly available search results. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with the source engines' terms and applicable laws. Use it for legitimate research, grounding and automation.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes — that's the primary design target. Because it's pay-per-event, an agent can discover and call it autonomously through the Apify MCP server, paying one charge per returned result. Wire it into Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client.

🔗 More AI, research & intelligence Actors by logiover

Building an agent or research pipeline? Pair AI Web Search with the rest of the AI & data-intelligence suite:

Actor	What it does
AI Deep Research	Multi-step autonomous research with cited findings
AI Web Extract	Turn any URL into clean structured data / Markdown
AI Citation Source Finder	Find citable sources to ground LLM answers
Company Deep Research Scraper	Build a full company dossier from the open web
News Intelligence Scraper	Multi-source news monitoring for agents
Google News Scraper	Fresh headlines & articles by query
SERP Keyword Research	Keyword ideas & SERP data for SEO
Semantic Scholar Research Scraper	Academic papers & citations
arXiv Paper Scraper	Preprints & research metadata
GitHub Repository Scraper	Repo metadata & code intelligence
npm Package Intelligence Scraper	Package stats & dependency data
CVE Security Advisory Monitor	Track new vulnerabilities for agents

👉 Browse all logiover scrapers on Apify Store — 180+ actors across real estate, jobs, crypto, social media & B2B data.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule this Actor on Apify to refresh a research corpus or monitor rankings on any cadence. Export results to JSON, CSV or Excel, sync to Google Sheets, or push to your database, vector store, BI tools and webhooks through the Apify API. Connect it to Make, n8n or Zapier to build automated grounding and research pipelines — or expose it as an MCP tool so an AI agent can call it live.

⭐ Support & feedback

Found a bug or need an extra field (more engines, different content extraction)? Open an issue on the Issues tab — response is usually fast. If this Actor saves you time, a ★★★★★ review on the Store page genuinely helps and is hugely appreciated. 🙏

⚖️ Legal

This Actor returns only publicly available search results and page content, and is intended for legitimate research, grounding, analytics and automation use. You are responsible for complying with the source engines' terms of service and any applicable laws.

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📝 Changelog

2026-07-06

• ✨ README overhaul: badge row, ready-to-run example scenarios, full field reference, richer FAQ (API alternative, keyless/no-browser, CSV/JSON export, how much data, legality) and the AI-research suite cross-links.

1.0 (2026-07-04)

• Initial release: keyless live web search for AI agents and RAG.
• Dual engine: DuckDuckGo HTML primary, Bing automatic fallback for resilience.
• Clean ranked results per query: title, URL, display URL, snippet, source domain.
• Optional includeContent — attaches each result page's main content as clean Markdown for grounding.
• Region/language and safe-search controls; batch queries with configurable concurrency.
• Keyless; Apify datacenter proxy by default (RESIDENTIAL opt-in).
• Pay-per-event pricing: one charge per returned result. Agent-first, works as an MCP tool.