Bing Search API alternatives after the shutdown

Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025, and Crawlora’s retirement guide notes that no single drop-in replacement exists because the API served different jobs. The right Bing Search API alternative depends on that job: a SERP scraper for Bing result parity, an independent index such as Brave, an AI search API such as Tavily or Exa, or Microsoft’s Grounding with Bing Search for Azure agents.

Your Bing Search API key suddenly returns 410 Gone, and the rank tracker, news monitor, site search box or RAG agent behind it has stopped. As Crawlora puts it, the endpoint is retired, so retrying won’t help.

You can pick a replacement per use case, price it at fixed query volumes and port the integration. Wayfern sells a Search API that covers Bing, so every tool here, ours included, gets a “when not to choose it” note.

Key Takeaways

• Only Bing SERP scrapers return Bing’s own ranking; every other route returns a different index’s order.
• Entity Search and Custom Search retired too, so check each replacement for them before committing.
• Cost per 1,000 queries varies by route. Trust only prices that carry a retrieval date.
• Migration is mostly auth, parameter and response-field mapping. Expect different result sets.

When did the Bing Search API shut down?

Microsoft decommissioned the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025, and calls to the old endpoints now fail with HTTP 410 Gone, according to Crawlora’s retirement guide. Microsoft’s own replacement is not a drop-in swap, so pick an alternative by use case, not by vendor ranking.

Date	Event	Source
August 11, 2025	Microsoft retires the Bing Search APIs	Crawlora, ScrapeGraphAI
After that date	A request with an old key returns 410 Gone	Crawlora
As of August 2025	The whole sub-API family is gone: Web, Image, News, Video, Entity, Autosuggest, Spell Check and Custom Search	NewsData.io

A 410 means the resource is gone for good. Retrying, rotating keys or waiting won’t bring the endpoint back, so treat the error as a migration trigger, not an outage.

Which type of Bing Search API alternative do you need?

The type of Bing Search API alternative you need depends on what you want back: Bing’s own ranking, another index’s ranking, page content for an LLM, or a Microsoft-managed agent tool.

	Result-parity SERP APIs	Independent-index API	AI/RAG search tools	Grounding with Bing Search
What you get	Parsed Bing results page	Ranked web results as JSON	Page content for LLMs	Search tool inside an Azure agent
Ranking source	Bing	Its own index	Vendor retrieval	Microsoft-managed
Choose when	You need Bing order	Bing order doesn’t matter	You feed text to a model	Your agent already runs on Azure
Don’t choose when	You want no scraping dependency	You must match Bing	You need a ranked results page	You need raw results

Only the first family returns Bing-ranked results, because it fetches live Bing pages and parses them. SerpApi, DataForSEO and Bright Data sit here, per Bright Data’s list of Bing API alternatives, and so does Wayfern’s Search API.

Wayfern’s Search API accepts engines of google, bing or duckduckgo per request, runs them concurrently, and merges duplicate URLs tagged by engine.

Microsoft’s own route is Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI Foundry, as NewsData.io’s comparison notes. ScrapeGraphAI’s review calls it “not a drop-in replacement” and “an entire platform commitment”. Choose it only when your agent already lives on Azure.

Brave and the AI search tools retrieve differently from Bing, so don’t expect Bing’s order. For Brave’s index size and certifications, read Brave’s own docs.

Overlap between these routes and Bing is not published, so measure it yourself. Fix a list of queries, pull the top 10 URLs from a Bing SERP API and from each candidate, normalize the URLs, and count shared results per query. Then average the counts.

Which alternative replaces each Bing Search API v7 endpoint?

Only Bing’s Web Search sub-API has a named replacement, and both mappings carry caveats.

Bing v7 sub-API	Replacement	Caveat
Web Search	Grounding with Bing Search (Azure AI Foundry)	Not a drop-in swap, needs Azure setup
Web Search	Wayfern Search API, Bing engine	Parsed results page, not v7 JSON

With Grounding, you adopt an Azure platform, not an endpoint.

Our Search API returns ranked Bing results with absolute ranks, ad flags and pagination. It reads live Bing results pages, including ads and people-also-search blocks.

No option in the table replaces News, Image, Video, Autosuggest, Spell Check, Entity, Visual, Custom or Local Business. Check each vendor’s current docs for those before you commit.

What you lose

• Answer filtering and hit highlighting: neither option offers them. Filter result types and highlight terms in your own code.
• Entity Search and Visual Search: neither option has an equivalent.
• Custom Search scoped to a site list: the nearest workaround is the documented site parameter on the Search API, one site per query. Google’s Custom Search JSON API is another route, subject to its current availability and limits.

To cover a site list, run one query per site and merge the results yourself.

How much does a Bing Search API alternative cost?

A Bing Search API alternative costs its billing unit multiplied by your volume, and the units differ: vendors bill per request, per credit or per results page.

Paging multiplies the count. If you need 30 results and a provider returns 10 per page, one query is three billable pages. Compare vendors by the cost of the queries you actually run, not by the headline rate.

Take every other vendor’s price from that vendor’s own pricing page, and write down the date you read it. Prices and free-tier limits change, and a figure without a date is a guess.

Wayfern’s numbers come from its pricing page. A search costs 2 credits per provider results page, and the list rate is $0.0125 per credit, so one page costs $0.025. That makes 1,000 single-page queries $25 and 100,000 single-page queries $2,500.

Wayfern’s plans start at $19 a month. According to Wayfern’s SERP API page, one credit balance pays for searches on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo, and each engine you query in one request fetches its own results page. Current plans and credit packs are on the pricing page.

Fill in this worksheet with each vendor’s own unit and the date you read its price:

pages_per_month = monthly_queries x pages_per_query
units_per_month = pages_per_month x units_per_page (1 for per-request pricing, credits for credit pricing)
monthly_cost    = units_per_month x price_per_unit (price read on YYYY-MM-DD)

For Wayfern, 1,000 x 1 x 2 x $0.0125 gives $25 a month.

How do you migrate from the Bing Search API?

You migrate a Bing v7 integration by swapping the credential, remapping six parameters, rewriting the response parser and adding explicit error checks. Plan an afternoon for a single endpoint.

1. Swap the credential. Bing v7 read your key from the Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header. Wayfern takes a search-scoped wf_ token as Authorization: Bearer. Load it from an environment variable on your server, never in client code.

2. Map the parameters. Bing v7 took q, mkt, count, offset, setLang and freshness, per Microsoft’s v7 query parameter reference. Each has a counterpart in the Wayfern Search API reference:

Bing v7	Wayfern	Note
q	text	Up to 512 characters
mkt	region + lang	One market code becomes two fields
count	limit	1 to 200 per engine, default 50
offset	start	Use pagination.next_start
setLang	lang
freshness	date	YYYYMMDD..YYYYMMDD, so compute the range

3. Rewrite the parser. Bing nested hits under webPages.value. Wayfern’s Search API returns rows with rank (organic only), absolute_rank (every row, ads included), type, an ad flag, url and engine. Filter on the ad flag if your old code assumed organic-only lists.

4. Add error handling. A retired Bing key returns 410 Gone, as Crawlora documents, so remove any retry loop around it. Wayfern says a blocked engine often looks like an empty list, so check meta.engines_failed before you treat zero rows as zero results.

5. Respect limits and page through. Search is limited to 30 requests a minute (see /docs/limits). Loop while has_more is true, passing pagination.next_start as start.

const res = await fetch("https://api.wayfern.com/api/search/v1", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.WF_TOKEN}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    text: "bing search api alternative",
    engines: ["bing"],
    lang: "en",
    region: "us",
    limit: 20,
    start: 0,
  }),
});
const data = await res.json();
if (data.meta.engines_failed?.length) console.warn(data.meta.engines_failed);

Even with engines set to bing, we haven’t measured overlap with the old API. Run your own query set before you cut over.

If you want to test this, try the Search API with the Bing engine on a handful of your real queries.

Which Bing Search API alternative fits your use case?

The Bing Search API alternative that fits depends on the job, so each use case below ends in one recommended option and one runner-up. Wayfern makes two tools named here, the Search API and the MCP server, and we name a competitor wherever it fits better.

1. Rank tracking.

• Recommended: a Bing-engine SERP API. Wayfern’s Search API is one, returning Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo results with absolute ranks and ad flags.
• Runner-up: a second SERP vendor, to cross-check positions.
• Why: a scraper is the only route that keeps Bing’s own ordering.
• Not when: you need a free tier. Wayfern doesn’t have one.

2. Media monitoring.

• Recommended: a Bing-engine SERP API with a date filter.
• Runner-up: Brave Search API.
• Why: you want recent coverage in a ranked list, not one fixed index.
• Not when: you need a structured news feed. We haven’t verified a Bing News replacement.

3. Internal search box.

• Recommended: Brave Search API.
• Runner-up: Google Custom Search JSON API.
• Why: a plain JSON endpoint is the closest match to the old v7 call.
• Not when: results must stay inside a fixed list of sites. Use Google’s option then.

4. RAG or AI agent.

• Recommended: Tavily.
• Runner-up: Wayfern’s MCP server for AI agents (search_web), for agents that want live results from several engines.
• Why: both return text an LLM can read.
• Not when: you need Bing’s exact ranking, or Exa fits your retrieval style better.

5. Azure-hosted agent.

• Recommended: Grounding with Bing Search. Microsoft’s migration advice points developers to it inside Azure AI Foundry.
• Runner-up: Tavily.
• Why: your agent and billing already live in Azure.
• Not when: you want a plain REST call. One review calls it “an entire platform commitment”.

6. Privacy-sensitive app.

• Recommended: Brave Search API.
• Runner-up: a SERP API behind a project-scoped token.
• Why: you send queries to one vendor with its own index.
• Not when: you need contractual data residency. We haven’t verified any vendor’s terms, so read each one first.

What are the legal and compliance risks of search API alternatives?

The legal and compliance risks of search API alternatives fall into three groups: scraping terms, vendor longevity and personal-data handling. None rules out the category, but each needs a decision before you ship.

1. Terms of service and scraping law. Bing and Google each publish terms that govern automated access to their results pages. Read both before you pick a SERP scraper.

A SERP-API vendor runs the fetching and carries the operational side of that access. You still own the decision to collect the data and what you do with it.

We cite no court ruling, because case law differs by country and keeps changing. Lawful use is your responsibility, and a lawyer should review your use case.

2. Vendor longevity. Microsoft’s own first-party API disappeared, and its official migration advice points to “Grounding with Bing Search” inside Azure AI Foundry. Assume any vendor can disappear too.

Put a thin interface in front of search: one function that takes a query, market, language and count, and returns url, title, snippet and rank. Keep the provider name out of your database schema and cached rows. A swap then costs one adapter, not a migration.

3. GDPR and data residency. Queries can contain personal data. Before you sign, ask each vendor these questions in writing, and check the answers against its own privacy and DPA pages:

• Do you log query text?
• How long do you retain it?
• Which subprocessors see queries?
• Do you offer a data processing agreement?
• In which region are queries processed?

Ask Wayfern the same five questions, and read its published pages rather than our summary. Note the date you read each vendor’s policy.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best Bing Search API alternative?

There is no single replacement because, as Crawlora explains, the API served different jobs. Use a SERP scraping API when you need Bing’s actual results, an independent-index API such as Brave for general search, an AI search API such as Tavily or Exa for agents, and Grounding with Bing Search if you build on Azure.

Is Grounding with Bing Search a drop-in replacement?

No. ScrapeGraphAI’s review is direct: Grounding with Bing Search isn’t a drop-in replacement. It sits inside Azure AI Foundry and brings resource groups, model deployments and Azure lock-in, not a plain query-to-JSON endpoint. Choose it when you already build on Azure.

Is there a free Bing Search API alternative?

Free tiers exist at some vendors, but terms change, so check each vendor’s docs before you commit. Wayfern has none. Our cheapest entry is a 1,000-credit pack at $12.50, and the pricing page has current rates.

Is it legal to scrape Bing results?

That depends on Bing’s terms, your jurisdiction and the data you collect, and this isn’t legal advice. Terms of service, vendor longevity and personal-data handling all need a decision. Get counsel before you scale.

Can I still get Bing Search API access?

Not through the old endpoints. Microsoft retired the Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025, and old keys now return 410 Gone. No first-party query-to-JSON endpoint remains to sign up for.

What should you do this week to replace the Bing Search API?

Replace the Bing Search API this week by listing what your code calls, testing two candidates on dated prices, then shipping the winner behind a thin interface. Any bing search api alternative you pick should survive that short test first.

Today: List which Bing sub-APIs your code calls: Web Search, Image Search, News Search, Video Search, Entity Search, Autosuggest, Spell Check or Custom Search, the family NewsData.io lists as retired. Then find your row in the use-case list.

This week:

• Fill the cost worksheet with dated prices.
• Pick 20 of your own queries, send them to two candidates, and compare the top 10 URLs.

This month: Ship the winner behind a thin interface in your code. Watch error rates and empty result lists before you delete the old calls.

If you need live Bing, Google and DuckDuckGo results from one endpoint, send your first Search API request with a search-scoped token. Wayfern charges 2 credits per provider results page, and credit packs start at $12.50 for 1,000 credits that never expire. There’s no free tier, so test a small pack first. Rates are on Wayfern’s pricing page, and the quickstart is in the developer docs.

Sources

Best Bing Search API Alternatives in 2026 (After the… · 7 Best Bing Search API Alternatives in 2026 (Compared) · SERP API - Google, Bing & DuckDuckGo | Wayfern · developer.mozilla.org · Best Bing Search API Alternatives (2026 Update & List) · Bing Search API Alternatives: 7 Best Replacements in 2026 · Pricing - Credits for Browsers & the Web Data API | Wayfern · wayfern.com. Every other source is linked where the article cites it.