Kagi Search API vs Bing Search API for AI agents
Kagi Search API is programmatic access to Kagi's premium, ad-free search results for search products and agents. Microsoft's Bing Search APIs were retired on August 11, 2025 and are no longer available.
The short answer
- Kagi Search API: High-quality, ad-free results with clear terms that explicitly allow feeding results to an LLM.
- Bing Search API: Nothing for new projects: it is retired; Microsoft points customers to Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure AI Agents.
Side by side
| Kagi Search API | Bing Search API | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Kagi's search results (web, news, video, podcasts, images per its MCP). | – |
| Returns | JSON search results; optionally full Markdown extraction of the top results in the same request. | – |
| Before the first call | A Kagi account, an API key from the API dashboard, and billing set up (pay-per-use, prepaid credit or invoice). | – |
| Paid | $12 per 1,000 requests; Extract $4 per 1,000 pages. | – |
| Acting on a result | Through the web page each result links to | – |
| Limits on keeping or showing results | No storing, caching or building a database of results beyond transient caching; cached results must be deleted on termination. | – |
| AI in its terms | Sending results to an AI model to answer your users is allowed; training or fine-tuning models, or harvesting training/evaluation datasets, is not. | – |
| MCP server | Official MCP server: https://mcp.kagi.com/mcp (code: https://github.com/kagisearch/kagimcp) | – |
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use Kagi Search API?
A Kagi account, an API key from the API dashboard, and billing set up (pay-per-use, prepaid credit or invoice).
Is Kagi Search API free?
Its pages listed no free use when we read them on October 15, 2026.
Sources
Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.
Kagi Search API, read on October 15, 2026:
- kagi.com/api/pricing: “$12 /1k requests”
- kagi.com/api/pricing: “$4 /1k pages”
- kagi.com/api/docs: “The Search API is a feature-rich endpoint for search products and agents.”
- kagi.com/api/docs: “You can also request full markdown extraction of the top results in a single API request.”
- help.kagi.com/kagi/api/overview.html: “The API uses a pay-per-use model”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “Store, cache, or build a database of Results beyond the transient caching needed to operate your application.”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “including sending Results to an AI model to answer your users' queries.”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “Use Results to train or fine-tune a search index, ranking system, translation or summarization model”
- github.com/kagisearch/kagimcp: “The Official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Kagi Search & other tools.”
Bing Search API, read on October 15, 2026:
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/bing-search-api-retirement: “Bing Search APIs will be retired on August 11, 2025.”
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/bing-search-api-retirement: “the product will no longer be available to be used or new customer signup.”
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/bing-search-api-retirement: “Customers are encouraged to migrate to Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents.”