Parallel Search API vs Kagi Search API for AI agents
Parallel Search API is a search API built for AI agents that takes a natural-language objective and returns ranked URLs with compressed excerpts. Kagi Search API is programmatic access to Kagi's premium, ad-free search results for search products and agents.
The short answer
- Parallel Search API: Token-efficient excerpts for agent tool calls, with fast low-cost modes and a free keyless MCP.
- Kagi Search API: High-quality, ad-free results with clear terms that explicitly allow feeding results to an LLM.
Side by side
| Parallel Search API | Kagi Search API | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Parallel's own web index (it says billions of pages, millions added daily). | Kagi's search results (web, news, video, podcasts, images per its MCP). |
| Returns | JSON results with URL, title, publish date and LLM-ready excerpts (dense snippets or full page markdown). | JSON search results; optionally full Markdown extraction of the top results in the same request. |
| Before the first call | An account and an API key (x-api-key header); the Search MCP works without a key at lower limits. | A Kagi account, an API key from the API dashboard, and billing set up (pay-per-use, prepaid credit or invoice). |
| Free | Up to 5,000 requests a month free ($5 in free credits a month), plus up to $80 at signup. | Not stated on its pages |
| Paid | $0.001 to $0.005 a request for 10 results. | $12 per 1,000 requests; Extract $4 per 1,000 pages. |
| Acting on a result | Through the web page each result links to | Through the web page each result links to |
| Limits on keeping or showing results | Outputs may not be copied, cached, stored or reused from previous queries for future uses (beyond what the terms allow). | No storing, caching or building a database of results beyond transient caching; cached results must be deleted on termination. |
| AI in its terms | You may not use outputs to create synthetic training data for a language model; Parallel may use customer inputs and outputs to train its own models. | 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 Search MCP: https://search.parallel.ai/mcp (free, no API key needed) | 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 Parallel Search API?
An account and an API key (x-api-key header); the Search MCP works without a key at lower limits.
Is Parallel Search API free?
Up to 5,000 requests a month free ($5 in free credits a month), plus up to $80 at signup.
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.
Parallel Search API, read on October 15, 2026:
- parallel.ai/pricing: “Run up to 5,000 requests per month for free”
- parallel.ai/pricing: “Earn up to $80 at signup + $5 in free credits per month”
- parallel.ai/products/search: “Billions of pages covering the full depth and breadth of the public web”
- docs.parallel.ai/search/search-quickstart: “takes a natural language objective and returns relevant excerpts optimized for LLMs”
- parallel.ai/customer-terms: “shall not copy, cache, or store any significant portion of any Customer Output”
- parallel.ai/customer-terms: “making available Customer Outputs from previous queries for future uses”
- parallel.ai/customer-terms: “create synthetic training data to develop or train a language model”
- parallel.ai/customer-terms: “Parallel may use Customer IP to train and improve the machine learning and other artificial intelligence models”
- docs.parallel.ai/integrations/mcp/search-mcp: “https://search.parallel.ai/mcp”
- parallel.ai/pricing: “$0.001 - $0.005 for 10 results”
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.”