Credits and limits

Search1API deducts credits after successful requests. Failed requests are not charged.

Request costs

Search with full page content

/search and /news have a dynamic cost when you set crawl_results:

1 credit for the search + 1 credit for each page crawled successfully

For example, if crawl_results is 4 and three pages return content, the request costs 4 credits. The unsuccessful crawl is not charged. crawl_results cannot be greater than max_results.

Batch requests are calculated item by item. A failed item has a cost of zero even when other items in the batch succeed.

Free and paid credits

New accounts receive 100 credits without a credit card or expiration date. Subscriptions reset an allowance each month; one-time credit packs do not expire. When both balances are available, subscription credits are deducted before one-time credits.

See the pricing page for current plans and pack sizes.

Check your balance

curl https://api.search1api.com/usage \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

{ "usage": 24980 }

The usage field is the number of credits remaining. When the balance cannot cover a successful request, the API returns 402 Payment Required instead of the original success response.

Rate limit

For bearer-authenticated requests billed to account credits, most endpoints allow 200 requests per minute per account. Screenshot rendering has a separate limit of 10 requests per minute per account. Requests made with different API keys from the same account share these limits.

A request above its endpoint limit returns 429 Too Many Requests with a Retry-After: 60 header. Wait for that interval before retrying. Contact sys@search1api.com if you need a higher limit.

Client timeouts

Search and result-crawling operations can wait up to 20 seconds for an upstream service. Screenshot requests accept a timeout_ms value from 1 to 30 seconds. Set the client timeout above the API timeout so the server can return a useful error response.

POST /deepcrawl is asynchronous. A successful start returns 202 Accepted with a taskId; poll GET /deepcrawl/status/{taskId} for the result. Status checks cost no credits.