Best Search API for LLM Pipelines With Extraction

An n8n thread asked the question that captures the entire 2026 search-API selection problem: "best search API for LLM pipelines? Looking for something that integrates search + content extraction." The OP was already running Google Custom Search plus manual scraping and felt the two-vendor split was fighting them at every step.

Why the two-vendor split fails

Most LLM pipelines need both: search results to find relevant pages, and content extraction to read those pages into the model context. If you split that across two vendors, you carry two contracts, two credit pools, two retry policies, and two JSON shapes. Cost goes up because each vendor charges its own platform tax. Latency goes up because the agent has to context-switch between APIs.

What the right API actually does

The right API exposes both surfaces under one key, returns typed JSON for the search step, and returns markdown for the extract step. Snippets fit the LLM context window without parsing HTML. Markdown from the extract endpoint replaces 200-line BeautifulSoup pipelines.

The Scavio shape

import os, requests
API_KEY = os.environ['SCAVIO_API_KEY']
H = {'x-api-key': API_KEY}

def research(topic):
    s = requests.post('https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/search',
        headers=H, json={'query': topic}).json()
    out = []
    for r in s.get('organic_results', [])[:5]:
        e = requests.post('https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/extract',
            headers=H, json={'url': r['link'], 'format': 'markdown'}).json()
        out.append({'url': r['link'], 'md': e.get('markdown', '')[:3000]})
    return out

The honest comparison

Tavily covers the search side well with built-in summarization but no separate extract endpoint at the same price tier. Serper is cheap raw Google SERP but ships nothing for content fetching. Exa does neural retrieval beautifully but charges $7/1K Search-with-contents at the new March 2026 pricing. Brave killed its free tier in February 2026 and moved to $5/1K. None of those single-vendor options solve the OP's actual problem cleanly.

What we recommend

For an n8n pipeline that fans out 3-10 queries per topic plus extracts on the top 1-2 results, Scavio at $30/mo for 7,000 credits works out to $0.0043/query — lower than Tavily PAYG ($0.008/credit), Exa ($0.007/query starting tier), or Brave ($0.005/query). The free tier returns 500 credits/mo, enough to validate the pattern end to end before billing.

Why this matters for n8n specifically

n8n's HTTP Request node is the universal interface — POST to https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/search with x-api-key in headers and a JSON body of { query }. No node-specific install. Self-hosted n8n behaves the same as Cloud. The same node shape works for the extract endpoint by changing the URL.

One credit pool is the real win

A 7,000-credit/mo budget covers 1,400 search-plus-extract pairs at the typical 5:1 ratio. If the pipeline grows, the same key scales — no second-vendor onboarding when you decide to add Reddit thread coverage or YouTube video search to the same workflow.