# DeepSeek search API

15 Hacker News commenters recommended DeepSeek search API and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Very cheap per-request web search API from DeepSeek that people recommend for cost; search quality is judged weaker than top rivals and data privacy is a concern.

## Why people recommend it

- Very low price per request (4 comments): "it's logical to pay a fraction of a cent if that makes it work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140456)) "The native web search api is 10x cheaper than OpenAIs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129469)) "this search pricing is fantastic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140112))
- Quality competitive with rivals (2 comments): "its better than Jina, Firecrawl and Tavily but worser than Parallel and Exa in terms of quality" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148881)) "Very impressive that DeepSeek has such a competitive offering today." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138899))

## What people warn about

- Privacy and data sent to China (4 comments): "the privacy policy says that you would store my search history" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50139993)) "the search call becomes a new data path to China even if the model runs in the EU" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50152895)) "I personally also wouldn't trust Deepseek with companies secrets" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50141756))
- Search quality below top rivals (2 comments): "its better than Jina, Firecrawl and Tavily but worser than Parallel and Exa in terms of quality" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148881)) "its search and fetch aren't very good (is quite cheap tho)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144703))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Exa](https://hackerapproved.com/p/exa.md): 33 recommend
- [SerpApi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/serpapi.md): 16 recommend
- [Brave Search API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brave-search-api.md): 15 recommend
- [Kagi Search API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kagi-search-api.md): 10 recommend
- [Tavily](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tavily.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "DeepSeek search API", https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-search-and-fetch/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).