> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://danswer-mintlify-deep-research-1773355783.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Web Search

> AI-powered web search

## Overview

<img className="rounded-image" src="https://mintcdn.com/danswer-mintlify-deep-research-1773355783/6l4K9uqnjiAmHtjO/assets/overview/core_features/web_search.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=6l4K9uqnjiAmHtjO&q=85&s=186c19b97b279a298223ad312a86f668" alt="Web Search" width="1948" height="848" data-path="assets/overview/core_features/web_search.png" />

Onyx can access the internet for questions that require up to date information or for niche information that the LLM may
not be certain about.

Users can toggle the **Web Search** Action on the fly to override the LLM's decision.
If [Internal Search](/overview/core_features/internal_search) was used during the research process,
Onyx will seamlessly combine web sources with internal documents in both the answer generation and for displaying in the
UI.

## Requirements

To provide Web Search functionality,
Onyx requires both the ability to get search results and to be able to parse websites for more complete context.
This is broken down into 1) *the search provider* and 2) *the web scraper*.

### Search Providers

Onyx provides multiple search providers (pricing subject to change, please double check):

| Name       | Provider   | Price                           | Benefit                                                                         |
| ---------- | ---------- | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Google PSE | Google     | Free tier + \$5/1000 queries    | Official Google search results, high trust option for security conscious teams. |
| Serper     | Serper.dev | Free tier + \$0.30/1000 queries | Fast, and cost-effective                                                        |
| Exa        | Exa.ai     | \$5/1000 queries                | AI-optimized with better semantic capabilities                                  |

### Web Scraper

As the Search Providers only give short snippets and metadata,
a scraper is used to fetch the full site contents for more complete/reliable answers.

| Name          | Requires Config | Benefits                                                 |
| ------------- | --------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| Onyx built-in | No              | No third parties get access to user queries, free to use |
| Firecrawl     | Yes, API key    | More performant with better edge case handling           |
