Searching the web programmatically has always been painful. Google's Custom Search API limits you to 100 free queries per day. Brave Search API gives you 2,000/month on the free tier before charging $5 per 1,000 queries. Bing Web Search API is $7 per 1,000. And every single one of them locks you into a single search engine, meaning your results are only as good as that one provider.
We just shipped a Web Search API that works differently. It aggregates results from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Wikipedia simultaneously — deduplicated, ranked by relevance, delivered in clean JSON. One endpoint to rule them all.
How to use it
Like all ToolCenter APIs, it's a simple POST request with a JSON body:
curl -X POST "https://api.toolcenter.dev/v1/search" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"query": "best javascript frameworks 2026",
"limit": 10
}'You get back structured results immediately:
{
"query": "best javascript frameworks 2026",
"category": "general",
"totalResults": 38,
"returnedResults": 10,
"results": [
{
"position": 1,
"title": "6 Best JavaScript Frameworks for 2026",
"url": "https://strapi.io/blog/best-javascript-frameworks",
"snippet": "The JavaScript framework landscape has evolved significantly...",
"engine": "google",
"engines": ["google", "duckduckgo", "brave"],
"score": 6.6
}
],
"suggestions": ["javascript framework comparison 2026"]
}What makes it different
The engines array in each result tells you which search engines surfaced that URL. A result that shows up across Google, DuckDuckGo, and Brave simultaneously has a much higher confidence score than one that only appears in a single index. That multi-engine consensus is something you simply can't get from any single-provider API.
Search categories beyond "general web"
The API isn't limited to web pages. The category parameter unlocks different search modes:
- general — Standard web results (default)
- images — Image search with thumbnail URLs
- news — News articles with publication dates
- videos — Video content
- it — Developer-focused: Stack Overflow, GitHub, documentation sites
- science — Academic and scientific sources
Filters: time, language, safe search
Three additional parameters let you narrow results:
time— Restrict to recent content: day, week, month, or year.language— Two-letter language code (en, es, de, etc.).safe— Safe search: 0 = off, 1 = moderate, 2 = strict.
Autocomplete endpoint
There's also a companion autocomplete endpoint for building search UIs with instant suggestions. Pass a partial query and get completions back, cached for 10 minutes for fast response times.
POST /v1/search/autocomplete
{"query": "best java"}
// Response:
{"suggestions": ["best javascript frameworks", "best java ide", "best java books 2026"]}Practical use cases
Research automation — Pull the top results for a query, extract URLs, then use ToolCenter's Metadata API or SEO Analyzer to analyze each page. Automated competitive research in a few API calls.
Content monitoring — Search for your brand name daily with time: "day" to catch new mentions across the web.
AI applications — Feed search results to an LLM for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Get fresh, real-world context without relying solely on training data.
SEO keyword research — Search for a keyword, analyze the top 10 results with the SEO Analyzer API, and understand what's ranking and why.
Getting started
The Web Search API is available on all plans. Get a free API key and make your first search in under a minute. Full documentation at toolcenter.dev/docs#search-api.