Cloudflare launches Web Search API via AI Gateway with Ceramic, Exa, and Linkup

Cloudflare said Friday it is launching a Web Search API through AI Gateway with partners Ceramic.ai, Exa, and Linkup, so agents can pull live web results into inference instead of guessing page URLs and hitting 404s.

Agents that invent URLs waste tool calls. Cloudflare is putting search from Ceramic, Exa, and Linkup on the same AI Gateway control plane — with a public bar that those crawlers identify themselves and respect robots.txt.

On Friday, 2 October 2026, Cloudflare said it is launching a Web Search API through AI Gateway, with Ceramic.ai, Exa, and Linkup as the partners at the start. The company blog is titled “Introducing Web Search API via AI Gateway.” The page dates the post October 2, 2026. The byline is Michelle Chen, Sam Else, and Gabriel Massadas. The page does not print an hour. Those lines are Cloudflare’s.

What Cloudflare says an agent does when it needs a live page. An agent, here, is software that takes a next step, not only a chat reply. Cloudflare says that agent usually guesses the address of the page and then fetches it. The fetch is the request people make with a command called curl: ask a web address for the page. If the guess is wrong, the site answers 404 Not Found, which means that address is not there. Cloudflare says guessing addresses over and over is a poor way to work. Those lines are Cloudflare’s.

What the company says search is for. A person looking something up starts with a search box. Web search lets an agent do the same: send a query, get pages that match, and ground the answer on information that is live. Ground, in that sentence, means the reply is tied to those results, not only to what the model already stored. A model is trained and then frozen. After that freeze, called a knowledge cutoff, it does not know what happened later, so recent events, changing software, and fast news are hard to ask about. Cloudflare says search puts fresh, structured snippets from the web into the material the model sees. A snippet is a short extract of a page. Inference is the step where that model answers. Cloudflare’s own example is an agent building with Cloudflare’s tools during the company’s Birthday Week: without search, it can miss products released that week. Those lines are Cloudflare’s.

Where a developer calls it. AI Gateway is the control plane Cloudflare names for this product. A control plane is the set of switches around the work: logs, billing, security, and who may use which provider. Searches draw down an AI Gateway credit balance, and the calls show up in the same logs as other gateway traffic. A team can also send an ordinary web request, a REST API, from a backend, a phone app, or another service, and name the provider in that request. On Workers, code that runs on Cloudflare’s network, a binding is a direct call from that code. Bring-your-own-key is supported, the same way Cloudflare already supports it for companies that host models. Bring your own key means an account the team already has with Ceramic.ai, Exa, or Linkup, so that provider bills the team under its own agreement. Those lines are Cloudflare’s, on the blog. The how-to page says a query can run to 1,024 characters, about two short paragraphs, and a request can ask for at most 10 results.

Who answers, as the developer docs state it the same day. If the caller does not name a provider, Ceramic.ai is the default. The docs say Ceramic.ai runs its own index of more than 40 billion pages, built for agents rather than for a person at a search box, and that a result can carry a long description of the page. Exa, the docs say, mixes keyword search with a search that matches by meaning, and returns the bits of the page closest to the query. Linkup, the docs say, returns sourced snippets and does not write an answer of its own. The docs say each provider comes back in the same shape, a web address, a title, and a description when the provider sends one, so changing provider is one setting. More than 40 billion is Cloudflare’s figure, on the providers page. Those lines are the docs’.

What the partners agreed about crawling. Cloudflare says a crawler should say who it is, follow the rules a site sets, and leave a link to what it read. A crawler is the program that fetches pages so a search index can be built. The blog says Ceramic.ai, Exa, and Linkup have committed to Cloudflare’s verified-bot standards. A verified bot, in that commitment, is a crawler that meets the company’s published rules: it identifies itself, and it respects robots.txt. robots.txt is a file a site publishes that says what automated visitors may fetch. A search response has to include a link to the page that was crawled. The product’s about page says that commitment covers every provider on the API. Those lines are Cloudflare’s.

What the price line is. Cloudflare says it offers web search at each partner’s list API price, with no additional markup. A list price is the price that partner already publishes for its own search API. No markup means Cloudflare is not adding a fee on top when the search is paid with AI Gateway credits. The providers page says the same: credits are billed at that list price, and a team that brings its own key is billed by the provider. Each partner’s list price is printed on that page. Those lines are Cloudflare’s.

Zero Data Retention, and who is marked. The blog says Cloudflare will identify partners that support Zero Data Retention, so a customer can see that a query is not kept. Zero Data Retention means the provider does not store the search after it answers. The providers page, updated the same day, marks Ceramic.ai, Exa, and Linkup each as Zero Data Retention yes. Those marks are on that page. The blog’s sentence is the promise to name them. The page is where they are named.

What is still being built, and what a developer can do on Friday. Cloudflare says it is building native Server Tools inside AI Gateway. A tool, here, is a named action a model can call, such as search, instead of the application wiring that step by hand. Those Server Tools, as the post describes them, would live in the control plane so a developer would not have to define them. Web search is named as one of the first. The post says that version is coming soon. The same post says a developer can run web search as a tool today: the model asks for a search, the application runs it, and the results go back into the model. The how-to page shows that pattern. Those lines are Cloudflare’s.

The picture is a desk graphic. A cream field, a magenta band, and a charcoal panel. The panel is labeled SOFTWARE. The lines read Web Search API, Cloudflare AI Gateway, then the partners Ceramic.ai, Exa, and Linkup, then live results rather than guessed addresses, and verified-bot crawl rules. A footer names Cloudflare, Ceramic, Exa, and Linkup. The frame does not print a calendar date. It is a graphic of the launch. It is not a screenshot of a search result, and it does not show a missing page.

In plain terms, Cloudflare said on Friday that an agent can search the live web through AI Gateway, with Ceramic.ai, Exa, and Linkup, instead of guessing a page address and fetching a miss. The call can spend gateway credits, go out as a normal web request, or run from Workers code. A team that already has a key with one of those providers can bring it. Cloudflare says the charge is the partner’s list price, with nothing added on top, and its providers page marks all three as not keeping the query. The partners have committed to identify their crawlers, honor robots.txt, and link the page they crawled. Built-in Server Tools for that search are described as coming soon. A developer can wire search as a tool today.