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unlob vs Grounding with Bing Search

Microsoft’s designated successor to the retired Bing Search API, available only inside Azure AI Foundry. A platform commitment, not an API swap.

Verified 7 October 2026·Figures from vendors' own pages

On the headline rate that is 35× — $14 per 1,000 for Grounding with Bing Search’s Grounding with Bing Search transactions (one per tool call), its cheapest comparable mode, against $0.40per 1,000 searches. Other modes cost more; the pricing detail below lists them. Both figures are computed from the published plan tables rather than typed into this page, so they follow the vendors rather than drifting from them.

Price

  • unlob$0.40
  • Grounding with Bing Search$14
Per 1,000 comparable web searches — about ten results, no extraction, no summarisation. Log scale, because the spread is over an order of magnitude.
ProviderOwn index?$ / 1,000 searchesSource
Grounding with Bing Search

Priced: Grounding with Bing Search transactions (one per tool call). $14 per 1,000 transactions, counted per tool call within an agent run, with model costs billed separately. Available only inside Azure AI Foundry Agent Service or as a web knowledge source in Azure AI Search, and the raw results are not returned to the developer.

Yes

Bing index, via Azure AI Foundry

$14Grounding with Bing Search
unlob — Build

$29 per month for 50,000 credits, and a search is one credit.

Yes

Our own crawl and index

$0.58This page
unlob — Scale

$199 per month for 500,000 credits, and a search is one credit.

Yes

Our own crawl and index

$0.40This page
Rates are the cheapest directly comparable web search call — roughly ten results, no extraction and no summarisation — named by the vendor’s own mode, because that is the only way a table across credit systems, token pricing and per-request pricing means anything. Where a vendor does not publish a flat per-1,000 rate they are omitted from this table and covered in full on the landscape page. Figures read from each vendor’s own pricing page; the oldest read is 7 October 2026.

When Grounding with Bing Search is the better choice

A comparison page that cannot name a scenario where the competitor wins is an advertisement. Here are the real ones.

Choose Grounding with Bing Search

  • You are already on Azure AI Foundry, where it requires essentially no integration.
  • Enterprise agreements and compliance posture that already run through Microsoft.
  • Bing’s index quality.

Choose unlob

  • You want a standalone API rather than a platform.
  • Model independence.
  • Predictable, published per-query pricing.
  • Graph traversal and coverage auditing.

The substantive differences

Grounding with Bing Searchunlob
ShapeA grounding tool inside an agent platform.A standalone HTTP API and MCP server.
PricingBilled through Azure AI Foundry as part of an agent deployment.A published rate per 1,000 credits, and a search is one credit.

Sources

Every figure on this page was read from the vendor's own pricing page or funding announcement on the date shown.

Frequently asked questions

Is Grounding with Bing the same as the old Bing Search API?

No. The Bing Search API was a standalone REST endpoint you could call from anywhere. Grounding with Bing Search is a tool inside Azure AI Foundry agents. Migrating means adopting the platform, not changing a base URL — which is precisely why the retirement forced so many rewrites.

Check the claims yourself

The free tier is 10,000 credits a month with no card. That is enough to test coverage, latency and result quality against your own queries — which is a better comparison than this page.

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