At a glance
SearchAPI vs askFinz
Row by row — what a call buys on each side.
| Compared on | SearchAPI | askFinz |
|---|---|---|
| Underlying data | Google, Bing, YouTube and others, relayed | An index askFinz reads and holds |
| What comes back | Structured results, varying by engine and endpoint | The matched passage and an answer, together |
| Rate per 1,000 calls | $1.00–$4.00, by engine and endpoint | $0.75 top-up · $1.00 with the extension or a paid plan · $3.50 standalone |
| Engines covered | Several, through one interface | Not applicable — no engine is being queried |
| State between calls | None | Continuous reading; the index persists |
| Content structure | Relayed results across several engines | Filed as what it is — a judgment with its jurisdiction, a standard with its revision, a filing with its reference number |
Swipe the table sideways to see both columns.
SearchAPI's published range, verified 12 August 2026 — the rate varies by which engine and endpoint you call, so a single figure would misrepresent it. askFinz rates as published on pricing. Check SearchAPI's current page before relying on these figures.
What SearchAPI is
SearchAPI queries Google, Bing, YouTube and other engines on your behalf and returns the results as structured JSON, at rates that vary by engine and endpoint. It holds no index between requests; every call is a fresh relay to whichever engine you pointed it at. Covering several engines through one interface is a real convenience — needing YouTube results one day and Bing the next without integrating each one separately is a genuine saving in work.
What askFinz is
askFinz runs its own crawled web index, read continuously rather than fetched per query. A question returns the matched passage together with the answer, with the address it was read from and at no separate rate, and the index is filed by what each document actually is — a judgment with its jurisdiction, a standard with its revision, a filing under the reference number the issuing body published it with. Documents are read as documents: PDFs, Word files and slide decks are read page by page rather than linked to. On top of the index sits a set of workspaces — Search, Research, Chat, Code, News and more — plus a browser extension and a desktop app, all on one sign-in. askFinz does not sell index access as a standalone feed or API.
Why $1.00 is a real number and not a catch
Rates this low are worth understanding rather than dismissing. A relay has no crawl to run, no index to store and no continuous reading to fund, because none of that infrastructure belongs to it. The price honestly reflects the work. What it cannot reach is anything the engine did not choose to show, and it has no continuity: nothing improves between one call and the next, because nothing is kept. What comes back is also only as deep as the results page — a title, a snippet and a link, with a PDF or a filing listed rather than read, and the reference number that makes it citable discarded on the way through.
A component, or a place to work
One of these is a call you build against. The other is somewhere you open and use.
Choose SearchAPI if
- You need results from more than one engine and would rather integrate once than four times.
- Your deliverable is what a specific engine currently shows — SEO work, rank checking, reproducing a user's results.
- YouTube, image or other vertical endpoints matter to you. askFinz does not relay any of them.
- You need an API to call from your own code. askFinz sells no such call.
- Very high volume at the lowest possible per-call rate is the constraint, and processing the results yourself is acceptable.
Choose askFinz if
- You wanted a grounded answer with a checkable passage and the address it was read from, not a relayed results page to parse — including inside the PDFs, Word files and slide decks an engine will link to without having read.
- You do not want another engine's choices about what to surface silently deciding what your product can see.
- You want continuity — an index that has already read the page rather than a fresh outbound request each time.
- You want content filed by what it actually is — a judgment with its jurisdiction, a standard with its revision, a filing with the reference number its issuing body gave it — rather than as undifferentiated results.
- The answer needs somewhere to go afterwards — Research with sources attached, Storage, a project — and one sign-in should open the rest of the workspaces, the browser extension and the desktop app on the same index.
FAQ
Questions people ask
The things people actually ask before choosing between SearchAPI and askFinz.
5 questions · open one to read the answer
Sometimes. Its published range is $1.00–$4.00 per 1,000 calls depending on engine and endpoint, as of 12 August 2026; askFinz publishes $0.75 as a top-up, $1.00 with the extension or a paid plan and $3.50 standalone. At the top of SearchAPI's range askFinz is cheaper; at the bottom it is not.
No. It relays results from existing engines and keeps nothing between calls.
No. Those endpoints exist because SearchAPI relays engines that have them; askFinz answers from its own index of the web.
Because different engines and endpoints cost SearchAPI different amounts to relay. That is why a range is quoted here rather than a single flattering number.
No. askFinz does not sell index access as a standalone feed or API. It is sold the other way round: a set of workspaces, a browser extension and a desktop app, all reading one index on one sign-in.
Read how the index works, or see the fuller comparison against rented search infrastructure. Join the beta and try it against a real question.