DeepSeek Web Search and Fetch API

DeepSeek offers two standalone tool APIs for agents and RAG pipelines that need live web data:

Search: send a query, get structured web search results (title, link, summaries, optional page body)
Fetch: send a URL, get the page body already converted to Markdown

They are not chat models. They consume no tokens and are billed per successful request. Your code decides when and what to search, then feeds the results to any model.

Model names: deepseek-search, deepseek-fetch. Endpoints: POST /v1/tools/search, POST /v1/tools/fetch. Available in the default / svip groups. All data on this page comes from APIYI testing on October 21, 2026 (UTC+8).

Keys in the ClaudeCode group cannot call these two APIs. They return 503 no available channels for model deepseek-search. Create a separate key in the default or svip group.

What it is and when to use it

	Search	Fetch
Input	A query (supports operators such as `site:` and `lang:`)	One HTTP / HTTPS URL
Output	1–50 search results, page body optional	Page title + Markdown body
Typical use	Agent web lookup, live context for RAG, news and topic monitoring	Read one page from the results, crawl a docs site, feed a page to a model for summarizing
Measured latency	1.6–3.0 s	1.6–5 s (depends on the target site)

The usual pattern is Search first, then Fetch a few results: each result’s summary is enough for a model to judge relevance, so only fetch the pages you need in full.

How this relates to built-in search in Claude Code

This page is a plain API: your code calls /v1/tools/search and /v1/tools/fetch directly. In clients such as Claude Code and Codex, web searches started by the model go through a server-side tool (web_search) inside the chat API, which is a different thing. APIYI will support built-in search for DeepSeek models in those clients in a later release and will announce it separately.

Pricing

API	Official price	APIYI list price	Large-deposit customers pay (÷1.2)	General customers pay (÷1.1)
Search (`deepseek-search`)	$0.75 / 1,000 requests	$0.90 / 1,000 requests	$0.75 / 1,000 requests	about $0.82 / 1,000 requests
Fetch (`deepseek-fetch`)	$0.75 / 1,000 requests	$0.90 / 1,000 requests	$0.75 / 1,000 requests	about $0.82 / 1,000 requests

Pricing in one sentence: set against the “large-deposit customer with 20% bonus” baseline, so it lands on par with the official price once the bonus applies. The list price is $0.0009 per request; with the 20% top-up bonus the effective cost is $0.00075 per request, the same as DeepSeek’s official price. General customers with the 10% bonus pay about 1.09× the official price. Prices include tax and can be invoiced. DeepSeek offers no discount on these APIs and APIYI doesn’t price them for profit: they are offered to secure supply and serve customers. One APIYI key covers search, fetch and every major model, with no separate DeepSeek account or top-up needed.

Model prices are aligned with official pricing and may change with it; the table above is for reference only, and the Model Pricing tab in the top navigation is authoritative: Model Pricing.

Billing rules (same as the official API):

Only successful requests are billed: HTTP 200 with a result
Parameter errors (400) and fetch failures (404) are not billed
The price does not depend on count, need_content or response length: 1 result or 50 results with page bodies is still one request
Each call is its own row in the console logs, under the model name deepseek-search or deepseek-fetch, so you can reconcile by model

Quick start

curl https://api.apiyi.com/v1/tools/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIYI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "query": "DeepSeek V4 release",
    "count": 5
  }'

curl https://api.apiyi.com/v1/tools/fetch \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIYI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://docs.apiyi.com/en"
  }'

import os
import requests

BASE = "https://api.apiyi.com/v1/tools"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['APIYI_API_KEY']}"}

# 1. Search
r = requests.post(f"{BASE}/search", headers=HEADERS, timeout=60,
                  json={"query": "DeepSeek V4 release", "count": 5})
r.raise_for_status()
results = r.json()["results"]
for item in results:
    print(item["rerank_score"], item["title"], item["url"])

# 2. Fetch the top result
r = requests.post(f"{BASE}/fetch", headers=HEADERS, timeout=60,
                  json={"url": results[0]["url"]})
if r.status_code == 200:
    page = r.json()
    print(page["title"])
    print(page["content"][:500])
else:
    print("Fetch failed, not billed:", r.status_code, r.json()["error"]["message"])

The request body does not need a model field; if you send one it is ignored.

Request parameters

Search: `POST /v1/tools/search`

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`query`	string	✓	Search query, 1–128 characters, not all whitespace. Supports the operators below
`count`	int		Number of results, 1–50, default 10. Does not affect the price
`need_content`	bool		Return the page body, default `false` (then `content` is always an empty string). Roughly doubles the response size
`ori_question`	string		The user’s original question behind this search, 1–128 characters, used to understand intent
`localization`	string		The user’s IP address, used to prioritize localized results. Not a locale code: `ja-JP` returns 400

Search operators (inside query):

Operator	Effect	Example
`site:`	Only this site; join several with `OR`	`site:arxiv.org OR site:github.com RAG`
`-site:`	Exclude a site	`LLM -site:reddit.com`
`"..."` / `-"..."`	Require / exclude an exact phrase	`"thinking mode" -"deprecated"`
`-keyword`	Exclude pages containing the keyword	`apple -iphone`
`lang:`	Limit languages, comma-separated	`lang:zh,en DeepSeek`
`after:` / `before:`	Filter by publication date (year or full date)	`after:2026-10-01 AI news`

Fetch: `POST /v1/tools/fetch`

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`url`	string	✓	HTTP / HTTPS URL, up to 8192 characters, no username or password

Response fields

Search returns {"results": [...]}; each result has:

Field	Description
`title` / `url`	Title and link
`snippet`	Short summary, about 100–200 characters, for showing to people
`summary`	Long summary, about 600–800 characters, for feeding to models
`content`	Page body; empty string when `need_content` is `false`
`rerank_score`	Relevance score 0–3; 1.5 or higher is high quality
`authority`	Site authority 0–4, `-1` = unknown; 3 or higher is highly authoritative
`date`	Publication time (UTC, RFC 3339), may be `null`
`site_name` / `site_icon`	Site name and icon, may be `null`

Fetch returns {"title": "...", "content": "..."}, where content is the Markdown body.

Test results

Tested on 2026-10-21 (UTC+8):

Case	Result	Billed
Search, `count=5`	✅ 5 results, 1.8 s	1 request
Search, `count=5` + `need_content`	✅ all 5 with body, 32 KB response	1 request
Search, `count=50`	✅ 50 results, 180 KB response, 3.0 s	1 request
Search, `site:` operator	✅ every result from the given site	1 request
Search, `localization` set to an IP	✅	1 request
Search, `count=51` / empty `query`	400 with a specific reason	Not billed
Fetch, normal page	✅ 6,400-character Markdown, 1.6 s	1 request
Fetch, 404 page / nonexistent domain / private address	404 `failed to fetch URL`	Not billed
Fetch, malformed URL	400	Not billed
20 concurrent searches	✅ all 200, done within 2 s	1 request each

Things you need to know

"No results, no charge" rarely applies

A search engine almost always returns something: in testing, a string of random characters still returned 3 results and was billed. Likewise, some sites answer a missing page with their home page or a notice page instead of a 404 (a “soft 404”); Fetch treats that as a successful fetch and bills it. Validate queries and URLs in your own code before calling.

Every fetch failure is a 404; branch on the HTTP status code

When Fetch cannot get usable content it always returns 404 failed to fetch URL, whether the target page is 404, the domain does not exist, the address is private, or the site refused access. The type field in the error body is always shell_api_error, so use the HTTP status code plus message to tell errors apart: on 400 fix the parameters; on 404 try another URL; on 429 / 5xx wait and retry.

Results are raw third-party web content; treat them as untrusted input

Search and Fetch return raw content from the internet, which may include ads, wrong information, or even prompt injection aimed at AI. When you pass results to a model, tell it explicitly that this is external web content, not instructions. When you show results in a web page or app, escape the HTML.

Rate limits

The upstream limits are 100 QPS for Search and 25 QPS for Fetch, and Fetch has a separate limit per target domain. Going over returns 429; wait briefly and retry. When fetching many pages from the same site, throttle on the client side.

FAQ

How is this different from OpenAI / Claude / Gemini web search?

Those are built-in tools of chat models: the model decides whether and what to search, and searches are billed as tool calls on top (OpenAI web_search is $10 per 1,000 calls). This page is a standalone search API: your code decides when and what to search, the unit price is a small fraction of that, and the results can go to any model. For built-in tools, see OpenAI Web Search, Claude Web Search and Gemini Web Search.

Can I use it in Claude Code?

Not directly yet. Web searches the model starts inside Claude Code go through the chat API’s server-side tool, not through this API, and keys in the ClaudeCode group cannot call this API either. APIYI will support built-in search for DeepSeek models in those clients in a later release.

How fresh are the results?

Results carry a date field, and you can use the after: operator to get only recent content. In testing, news published the same day showed up.

Search Playground

Parameter reference, error codes, and a live request panel

Fetch Playground

Fetch any web page as Markdown

DeepSeek V4 Flash

A chat model to pair with it

Top-up bonuses

The more you top up, the bigger the bonus; large-deposit customers pay the official price

Basics

Basic API

Image API (Official)

Video API (Official)

Multimodal Understanding API

Text Generation

Audio API (Official)

Retrieval & Safety

DeepSeek Web Search and Fetch API

What it is and when to use it

How this relates to built-in search in Claude Code

Pricing

Quick start

Request parameters

Search: `POST /v1/tools/search`

Fetch: `POST /v1/tools/fetch`

Response fields

Test results

Things you need to know

FAQ

Search Playground

Fetch Playground

DeepSeek V4 Flash

Top-up bonuses

​What it is and when to use it

​How this relates to built-in search in Claude Code

​Pricing

​Quick start

​Request parameters

​Search: POST /v1/tools/search

​Fetch: POST /v1/tools/fetch

​Response fields

​Test results

​Things you need to know

​FAQ

​Related docs

Search Playground

Fetch Playground

DeepSeek V4 Flash

Top-up bonuses

What it is and when to use it

How this relates to built-in search in Claude Code

Pricing

Quick start

Request parameters

Search: `POST /v1/tools/search`

Fetch: `POST /v1/tools/fetch`

Response fields

Test results

Things you need to know

FAQ

Related docs