AI Agent Web Search API, Pay Per Use | Locus
All use cases

AI Agent Web Search

Give your AI agents real-time web search capabilities through Tavily, Exa, and Firecrawl — pay per search query with no subscriptions.

Why agents need web search

LLMs have training data cutoffs. When your agent needs current information — today's stock prices, recent news, a competitor's latest product launch, or real-time market conditions — it needs to search the web. Web search is the most fundamental capability that separates a static chatbot from a useful autonomous agent. With Locus, your agent can search the web through purpose-built AI search APIs like Tavily, Exa, and Firecrawl, paying per query from its USDC wallet. No separate accounts needed for any of these providers.

Available search providers

Tavily

Purpose-built for AI agents. Tavily returns structured, LLM-optimized search results — clean text extracts rather than raw HTML. Ideal for research agents that need to quickly gather and synthesize web information. The Locus catalog shows the current per-search price.

Exa

A neural search engine that understands semantic meaning rather than just keyword matching. Exa excels at finding conceptually similar content, research papers, and niche sources that traditional search engines miss. The catalog shows the current price for each search operation.

Firecrawl

Web scraping optimized for LLMs. Firecrawl converts webpages into clean markdown text, handling JavaScript rendering, popups, and complex layouts. Pricing depends on the operation and pages processed, with the current basis published in the catalog.

Search agent workflows

  • Research and reporting Agent searches for information on a topic, scrapes relevant pages, and uses a current Claude or GPT model to synthesize findings into a structured report.
  • Competitive intelligence Monitor competitor websites, pricing pages, and product updates. Agent runs periodic searches and flags changes or new developments.
  • Lead enrichment Search for information about prospects, companies, and industries to enrich CRM data and personalize outreach.
  • Fact checking Verify claims, check current data, and ground LLM responses in real-world information to reduce hallucinations.

Cost comparison

Direct provider plans and tool prices change over time. Locus publishes the current price or pricing basis for each search operation and charges only when your agent calls it, with no provider subscription. That makes costs follow actual usage and keeps search on the same bill as the rest of your agent tools.

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