Developing
Cloudflare did not state whether the API is in beta or general availability, and gave no latency or quality figures.
In 60 seconds
- Cloudflare released a Web Search API in AI Gateway on October 2, 2026, during its Birthday Week.
- Providers are Ceramic.ai (default, $0.25 per 1,000 requests), Linkup ($5.00) and Exa ($7.00), at list prices with no markup.
- Providers must meet Cloudflare's verified-bot rules, including respecting robots.txt, and link each result to the crawled source.
- Cloudflare also said AI Search billing starts November 1.
Impact Layer
- What changed
- Agents built on Cloudflare can call a pay-per-query search service that is tied to crawler rules.
- Why it matters
- It links the price of agent search to a publisher-friendly rule set: identified crawlers, robots.txt and a link back to the source.
- Who is affected
- Developers building agents on Cloudflare, and publishers who care how search providers crawl.
- Martech stack area
- AI, Data
- Stack impact
- If you build agents, compare provider pricing and data-retention terms. Publishers can check that search providers named here appear as verified bots.
- Business impact
- Low Based on PPC Land's reading of Cloudflare's blog post and documentation. How compliance with the provider rules is checked is not stated.
- Related technologies
- What to watch
- The promised native Server Tools for AI Gateway, and how Cloudflare enforces the provider standards.
Cloudflare released a Web Search API inside AI Gateway on October 2, 2026, during Birthday Week, according to PPC Land’s reading of the blog post by Michelle Chen, Sam Else and Gabriel Massadas.
Providers and prices
- Ceramic.ai (default): $0.25 per 1,000 requests, zero data retention. Its index holds more than 40 billion pages.
- Linkup: $5.00 per 1,000, zero data retention.
- Exa: $7.00 per 1,000, no zero data retention.
Cloudflare says it charges list API prices with no markup, and supports bring-your-own-key. Queries are 1 to 1,024 characters and return 1 to 10 results.
Rules for providers
Each crawler must meet Cloudflare’s Verified bot requirements, including identifying itself and respecting robots.txt, and every result must link to the location of the crawled content. Cloudflare says its partners have committed to these standards.
Not stated
Beta or general availability, latency, freshness or quality figures, and how compliance is checked. A separate October 1 announcement said AI Search billing starts November 1.
Our read
Pricing and attribution rules sit in the same product, which is unusual. For a publisher the useful question is whether your robots.txt rules are respected by every provider an agent can pick.
Sources
- PPC Land: Cloudflare web search for AI agents costs $0.25 to $7 per 1,000 requests (opens in a new tab)
Source of the providers, prices, technical details and provider rules.