Cloudflare adds a Web Search API to AI Gateway

Cloudflare announced a Web Search API in AI Gateway on October 2, 2026. According to Cloudflare’s post, it gives agents native web search through three partners: Ceramic.ai, Exa and Linkup.

How you call it

Cloudflare documents a REST endpoint:

POST https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/{account_id}/ai/websearch/

The docs say the API token needs Workers AI Read and AI Gateway Read permissions. From a Worker, the post shows this binding:

const response = await env.AI.websearch({
  gatewayId: "default",
  query: "your question",
  provider: "exa",
  limit: 5,
})

The docs say query takes 1 to 1,024 characters, limit runs from 1 to 10 (default 10), and provider is ceramic, exa or linkup, with Ceramic as the default. The response holds an items array with a URL and title for each result, plus a metadata object. Fields such as description, image, favicon and last-modified date are optional and depend on the provider.

Billing

Cloudflare says searches billed through AI Gateway credits use the provider’s list API price without additional markup. Bring-your-own-key is also supported. If you set byokAlias, the gateway uses that stored provider key and returns a 400 error if it is missing. If you omit the alias, a stored key named default for that provider is used when present; otherwise the request draws down AI Gateway credits. With a stored provider key, the provider bills you directly.

The providers page lists the prices per 1,000 requests: Ceramic.ai $0.25, Linkup $5.00 and Exa $7.00. It marks Ceramic.ai and Linkup as zero data retention and Exa as not. Cloudflare’s about page says search requests flow through your gateway for unified observability.

What Cloudflare does not say

The reviewed pages define query length and results-per-request limits, but publish no requests-per-minute limit or usage quota. The about page gives no beta or general-availability designation. The post describes native Server Tools as coming soon, without a date; today, the Web Search API can be called directly or wired into an agent tool workflow.

Cloudflare says partners must meet its verified bots requirements, which include identifying their crawlers, respecting robots.txt and providing the source of search results. The docs make no claim that results from the three providers match in quality or freshness.

What to do

Try one provider with limit: 5 in a test Worker and compare the results for your own queries. Since switching providers is one parameter, run the same queries against all three before you choose. Check the current request-rate policy and service status before you build production traffic on this.