Migrating Off the Bing Search API

What changed

Microsoft announced the retirement in May 2025, with a shutdown date of August 11, 2025. Its Lifecycle notice says existing instances were decommissioned completely and that the product could no longer be used or signed up for. The notice points customers to Grounding with Bing Search, which is part of Azure AI Agents.

Grounding with Bing Search gives an Azure agent real-time web content for its own answers. It does not return raw results you can store or pass on yourself. Check the terms before you pick it for a product that needs the raw results. The shutdown covered the Web and Custom Search tiers. If your contract is not standard, confirm your access date with your Microsoft contact in writing.

A migration plan

Map every call your app makes to the old API. Note the endpoint, the result count, the locale settings and how the results are used. Many teams find they only read titles and URLs, which makes replacement simpler. Write down the fields you rely on, such as rank, title, URL and text, so you can check that each replacement returns them.

Then pick two or three replacements. Exa offers neural search over links with full text options. Brave runs an independent index and offers results designed for LLM apps. Tavily offers credit-based search for agents. Parallel takes an objective and returns excerpts. Hyperresearch Answers returns a short answer with quotes checked against their pages, which suits agents that need one verified fact.

Cut over in steps

Run the old and new results side by side for about two weeks. Compare the top five URLs for a fixed set of queries. Move a small share of traffic first, watch error rates and user reports, then move the rest. Agree the success measures before the first switch, so the decision to finish the move rests on numbers, not impressions. Keep the old code path until the new one has run cleanly. Confirm each replacement's terms too, including how long it keeps queries and results, whether it uses them for training, and whether you may store the results you receive. Your legal or privacy team should sign off before production traffic moves. Keep a rollback plan that can switch traffic back within an hour.

Checklist

• Find every place your code calls the Bing Search API.
• Record which result fields your app actually reads.
• Pick two replacements and test them on the same queries.
• Run the old and new results side by side for about two weeks.
• Move traffic in steps and keep a fallback path.

Questions & answers

Sources for this entry

• Microsoft Lifecycle: Bing Search APIs retirement
• Brave: what sets the Brave Search API apart
• Exa search API reference
• Hyperresearch Answers

Vendor descriptions are attributed to the vendor. Prices change; confirm with each vendor.

Continue this reading path

• Selection & fit
• Best Web Search API
• Resource directory

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