A curated list of AI-powered web search software, focusing on the intersection of Large Language Models (LLMs) and web search capabilities.
The list is organized as a timeline, containing software that support the following use cases:
- Web search with LLM summarization and follow-up questions.
- LLM chat with web search support via function calling.
- Agent-driven web research for generation of reports.
Web-search APIs you can wire into your own AI agents by pointing the agent at the API docs, or via an MCP server where one is offered. Building blocks, not standalone end-user apps.
Focused on general-purpose web search; domain-specific search APIs (academic papers, code repos, jobs, etc.) are out of scope.
| Launch Date | Software | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 2017-10-23 | SerpApi | SERP API |
| 2021-04-12 | SearXNG | Metasearch |
| 2022-11-03 | Serper | SERP API |
| 2022-11-10 | Exa | Search API |
| 2023-04-15 | Tavily | Search API |
| 2023-05-30 | Brave Search API | Search API |
| 2024-02-06 | SearchApi | SERP API |
| 2024-03-03 | DataForSEO | SERP API |
| 2024-04-10 | Jina | Scrape + Search |
| 2024-04-15 | Firecrawl | Scrape + Search |
| 2024-08-03 | JigsawStack AI Search | Search API |
| 2024-11-08 | Linkup | Search API |
| 2025-05-14 | Tako | Search API |
| 2025-08-25 | AI Search API | Search API |
| 2026-01-03 | Desearch | Search API |
| 2026-03-09 | Crawlberg | Scrape + Crawl |