Microsoft Discontinues Bing Search APIs

The Impending Retirement of Bing Search APIs: What Developers Need to Know

The Bing Search APIs have become a cornerstone for many developers, primarily because Google does not provide its search results through APIs. This utility has allowed developers to access ad-free, location-specific search results from an extensive database of web links. Interestingly, even competitors like DuckDuckGo have integrated these Bing Search APIs to enhance their alternative search services.

Announcement of Retirement

On August 11, 2025, Microsoft revealed that it will retire the Bing Search APIs. This announcement took many developers by surprise and raised alarms due to its swift timeline for deprecation. Microsoft confirmed that all existing instances of the Bing Search APIs will be entirely decommissioned, rendering them unusable for developers.

⚠️Microsoft is depreciating Bing Search API. And there is no replacement available. Grounding with Bing Search is suggested as alternative, but… “Developers and end users don’t have access to raw content returned from Grounding with Bing Search” Means that I can’t build full… pic.twitter.com/DfsAesHZIA

— Dmitry Katson (@DmitryKatson) May 13, 2025

Who Will Be Affected?

This deprecation impacts all developers utilizing the F1 and S1 through S9 tiers of Bing Search, as well as the F0 and S1 through S4 tiers of Bing Custom Search. This means a broad range of applications and services that rely on these APIs will need to adapt swiftly before the cut-off date.

Microsoft’s Recommendations

In light of the impending API retirement, Microsoft suggests that developers harness real-time public web data when generating responses in large language models (LLMs).Nonetheless, they acknowledge that “Grounding with Bing Search”doesn’t serve as a suitable substitute for Bing Search APIs.

Exploring Alternatives: Brave Search APIs

For developers seeking viable alternatives, the Brave Search APIs are emerging as a strong contender. Used by innovative startups such as Cohere, Perplexity, and Mistral, the Brave Search API presents a more economically attractive option, particularly for developers with lower usage requirements. The service is free for the first 2, 000 monthly calls and features several affordable subscription plans thereafter.

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