search.sh
Search.sh · Coding
Search.sh is an answer engine for people and AI agents that returns one structured JSON response, with a grounded answer, ranked sources, verified citations, and a confidence score.
About search.sh
What Is Search.sh
Search.sh is a search API built for AI agents and the developers who run them. You send one query, and it comes back with a synthesized answer plus the sources it used, citations checked against the source text, a confidence score, and related queries. It reads pages and picks the passages that answer your question, instead of handing back a list of links. For teams that want a cited answers API, the sources and footnotes arrive in the same payload.
The service targets the gap between raw search APIs and full answer engines. A regular search endpoint gives you ten blue links and leaves the reading to you. Search.sh does the retrieval and the reasoning in one call, so an agent can drop the JSON straight into a pipeline without a second parsing step. It also runs as a normal web search for people who just want a clear answer up top.
The main limit is that it's a developer product first. The web interface works, but the real value sits behind an API key, prepaid credits, and pricing that you track in a dashboard. Heavy use costs money, and the deep mode is five times the price of a fast lookup.
Getting Started
- Open search.sh and try a query in the web box to see the answer format.
- Create an account at the signup page, then grab an API key from the dashboard.
- Add credits if you plan to go past the free tier, since the free plan caps you at five searches a day per IP.
- Send a POST request to the
/api/searchendpoint with anAuthorization: Bearer sk-sh_...header and your query in the body. - Read the JSON, then pull the
answer,sources, andcitationsfields into your app or agent.
Product Information
A quick look at search.sh's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.
Best for
The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.
Users
- Developers building AI agents
- Teams running RAG pipelines
- Researchers who want speed
Tasks
- Answering user questions inside a chatbot
- Fact-checking and citation work
- Pulling clean text from a set of URLs
- Comparing a batch of queries at once
Scenarios
- Building an in-app search bar that answers instead of linking out
- Monitoring a topic across regions
- Feeding a daily digest
Key features
Structured JSON Answers
Every search returns one JSON object with an AI-generated answer, a ranked source list, citations, a confidence score, and related queries. This saves you from stitching together a search call and a separate model call. The confidence value reflects how much the sources agree and how well the answer stays grounded, so your app can decide whether to trust it.
Fast and Deep Search Modes
Fast mode runs a single query and aims to return in under five seconds, and it costs one credit. Deep mode generates sub-queries, searches them in parallel, extracts page content, and cross-references the results, which costs five credits. The deep mode is the one to reach for when a question needs several angles, and fast mode covers the quick lookups.
Verified Citations and Conflict Detection
Search.sh checks each citation against the text of its source. It drops the ones the source doesn't support and marks the rest as verified. For teams that need cited answers, this is the feature that separates a real citation from a guess. It also reads published and modified dates off each page and flags when a newer source disagrees with an older one. For answers where accuracy matters, this is where the product earns its keep.
Streaming and Page Extraction
Results can stream over server-sent events, so sources, answer tokens, and citations arrive as they're ready instead of after the whole call finishes. The extract endpoint pulls clean text from any URL, handles PDFs and Wayback fallback, and returns up to 40,000 characters per page. Both are useful when you're building a live interface.
Batch and Fingerprint Endpoints
The batch endpoint takes up to ten queries in one round trip, which cuts latency when you need several answers at once. The fingerprint lookup finds where a passage already appears on the web by shingle hash, without running a full search. That helps with duplicate detection and content checks.
Region and Recency Controls
You can aim a search at a specific region or go global, with 30 regions available. Recency controls like since and freshness_boost push newer sources up, and date-restricted results are cached for just an hour so they stay current. It's the set of knobs you need once a plain query isn't precise enough.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Returns an answer, sources, and citations in a single call, so there's no second API to wire up.
- Verified citations cut down on answers that point to sources which don't back the claim.
- Deep mode handles multi-angle questions by planning sub-queries and cross-referencing results.
- Cache hits are free, which keeps repeated and scheduled queries cheap.
- The free tier covers light testing at five searches a day per IP.
Cons
- The web interface is thin compared with the API, so most of the value is locked behind a key.
- Deep mode costs five credits a call, so a high-volume agent burns through prepaid balance quickly.
- There's no published per-search rate on the free tier beyond the daily cap, so cost planning needs a dashboard check.
- It's a newer, independent service, so you won't find the library of SDKs and tutorials that larger search APIs ship with.
Frequently asked questions
Search.sh is an answer engine and search API. It takes a query and returns structured JSON with an AI-synthesized answer, ranked sources, verified citations, a confidence score, and related queries, in either a fast or a deep mode.
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