Autom vs Brave Search API (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Autom if

• Fits if you want Google, Bing, Brave and Perplexity at the same price per request
• Works for high-volume rank tracking that needs 50 to 300 requests a second

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you need DuckDuckGo, Yandex or another engine, which only sit on its public roadmap
• Tight if you're testing, as the smallest pack is $50 once the 1,000 free requests are gone
• Watch out: credits expire a year after purchase, and queries stop when the balance reaches zero
• Watch out: refunds come only within 7 days of a first purchase, with no more than 20% of the credits used

Pick Brave Search API if

• Fits if you're grounding an AI chatbot in current web results without scraping Google
• Works for apps moving off Google's Custom Search JSON API

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you need Google or Bing rankings, as results come only from Brave's index
• Watch out: a credit card is needed to sign up, even for the free monthly credit
• Watch out: storing results or training models on them needs a plan with storage rights
• Tight if you need volume, at 50 requests a second on Search and 2 on Answers before Enterprise
• Pricey if you use Answers, at $4 per 1,000 queries plus $5 per million tokens each way

Autom

• Credits come in one-time packs, the smallest $50, that expire a year after purchase; queries stop when the balance reaches zero.
• Refunds are given within 7 days of the first purchase, as long as no more than 20% of the credits have been used.
• Only successful requests use credits; failed ones are free.
• Coverage is limited to search engines: Google, Bing, Brave and Perplexity; other engines go through its public roadmap.

Brave Search API

• Usage is billed from prepaid credits: Search is $5 per 1,000 requests, and Answers $4 per 1,000 queries plus $5 per million input and output tokens.
• Spellcheck and Autosuggest cost $5 per 10,000 requests, and storing results or training models on them needs a plan with storage rights.
• Results come only from Brave's index, so it does not report what ranks on Google or Bing.
• Capacity is 50 requests per second on Search and 2 on Answers; more needs an Enterprise agreement.

Autom

Google Search API

Returns web, image, news and local results as JSON, with organic results, the knowledge graph, related searches and pagination.

Bing, Brave and Perplexity

Separate endpoints for Bing, Brave and Perplexity cost the same single credit per request as Google.

Location targeting

Set the country and language, or narrow a search to a city or neighborhood, to see results as local searchers do.

Live results

Every call queries the engine directly with no caching; Autom says most results come back in one to two seconds.

High request rates

Packs allow 50 to 300 requests a second, roughly 15,000 to 18,000 searches a minute at the top rate.

No-code and API clients

Works from Zapier, n8n and Power Automate, or from API clients such as Postman, Bruno and Insomnia, with code samples in nine languages.

Brave Search API

Brave's own index

Every result comes from Brave's crawler and ranking, informed by opt-in signals from Brave users, with no fallback to Google or Bing for any query.

LLM Context endpoint

Returns ranked, extracted page content for a model to answer from, sized from 1k to about 33k tokens, with a relevance threshold and a URL and timestamp per source.

Web, news, image, video and places

The Search plan covers human-readable web results plus news, images, videos and location-aware places with map data, under one API key.

Goggles and richer results

Goggles rerank results and limit them to chosen sites; up to five extra snippets per result and schema-enriched results with added metadata.

Answers endpoint

Writes answers grounded on one or several searches, with citations and streaming, through an interface compatible with the OpenAI SDK.

Privacy and security

Brave says queries are never shared or used for training, retention is zero by design, and the service is SOC 2 Type II attested.

Autom

• Starter$50

  one-time for 50,000 credits, valid 1 year

  $1.00 per 1,000 requests, 50 requests a second, location targeting and 90 days of logs.

• Standard$375

  one-time for 500,000 credits, valid 1 year

  $0.75 per 1,000 requests and 100 requests a second.

• Premium$1,250

  one-time for 2,500,000 credits, valid 1 year

  $0.50 per 1,000 requests and 200 requests a second.

• Ultimate$3,750

  one-time for 12,500,000 credits, valid 1 year

  $0.30 per 1,000 requests and 300 requests a second, which can be raised on request.

Brave Search API

• Free monthly credits$0

  $5 of credit a month on each of Search, Answers, Spellcheck and Autosuggest; usage beyond it is drawn from prepaid credits.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Custom terms, capacity and endpoints, full-funnel zero data retention, NDAs, invoicing and enterprise support. Sold through sales.

Autom

• Startups

  Startup Program discounts for 12 months

  Autom's Startup Program gives early-stage companies under 3 years old discounted rates on paid plans for 12 months, with priority support.

Brave Search API

No public discounts listed.