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The Parallel Search API

120 points by lukaslevert

by davidsainez

2 subcomments

Saw this post. clicked on pricing. "Run up to 20,000 requests for free", ok lets try it. sign up for an account. click on playground. try a query -> balance is insufficient. then I clicked on "pricing" tab inside of the dashboard (https://platform.parallel.ai/pricing), no mention of any free requests.
I pay for a lot of tools, but patterns like this leave me with a really bad impression.

by hamasho

1 subcomments

  > Traditional search engines were built for humans. They rank URLs, assuming someone will click through and navigate to a page. The search engine's job ends at the link. The system optimizes for keywords searches, click-through rates, and page layouts designed for browsing - done in milliseconds and as cheaply as possible.
  > ... AI search has to solve a different problem: what tokens should go in an agent's context window to help it complete the task? We’re not ranking URLs for humans to click— we’re optimizing context and tokens for models to reason over.

I also want a search engine which ranks the results based on how it's useful to reason about, not how it can sell potential ads by invoking false rage or insecurities. And it would be better if unrelated information or fancy gimmicks are removed from the website like Reader View.

by srameshc

1 subcomments

I like Parallel and been using it for tests but I am not sure about the terms.
> The materials displayed or performed or available on or through our website, including, but not limited to, text, graphics, data, articles, photos, images, illustrations and so forth (all of the foregoing, the “Content”) are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property laws. You promise to abide by all copyright notices, trademark rules, information, and restrictions contained in any Content you access through our website, and you won’t use, copy, reproduce, modify, translate, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, upload, display, license, sell, commercialize or otherwise exploit for any purpose any Content not owned by you, (i) without the prior consent of the owner of that Content or (ii) in a way that violates someone else’s (including Parallel's) rights.

by tcdent

1 subcomments

Search accuracy, when used in the context of an agent, is so important because when you are delivered search results which are incorrect, the agent tends to interpret them as fact because they come from a "credible" source. So, this is very much an industry that still has plenty of room for improvement, and I'm excited to see how this product performs.

by BinaryIgor

2 subcomments

Interesting, but I'm not totally convinced that searching for LLMs is different than for us (humans). In the end, we both want to get information that's relevant to our query (intent). Besides, I wonder whether there will be able to convince big players like OpenAI to use them, instead of Google Search with its proven record :)

by rishabhparikh

1 subcomments

Typescript SDK link is broken: https://docs.parallel.ai/resources/typescript-sdk

by bfeynman

1 subcomments

the need for more web search indices is indeed dire given landscape with agents and providers turning into walled gardens means that independent ones are definitely going to be needed, but just seems insurmountable when building actual index is so costly. Maybe just purely pareto efficient of serving 80% of requests or something is good enough.

0 subcomment

by nahnahno

2 subcomments

The fact that GPT-4.1 was the judge does not convince of the validity of the bench.

by ddp26

0 subcomment

Hi Parag, congrats on the launch. We'll try this out at FutureSearch.
I agree there is a need for such APIs. Using Google or Bing isn't enough, and Exa and Brave haven't clearly solved this yet.

by aabhay

1 subcomments

The latency of 5s for the basic tier search request is very confusing to me. Is that 5s per request or 5s per 1k requests? If it is indeed 5s per request that seems like a deal breaker

by kanodiaayush

0 subcomment

I'm really excited to try out your deep research apis, the benchmark results look really interesting and the pricing is compelling.

by hartator

0 subcomment

Congrats on the launch!

by Jotalea

0 subcomment

it's pretty interesting how there is a toggle to switch between "human" and "machine" styles for the website, the latter being the same site with the same information, but displayed using a markdown format.

by amnigos

0 subcomment

Congrats Parag and team on the launch, I am impressed by the quality and latency of Parallel search APIs.

by gm678

0 subcomment

Same pricing as Google search APIs, for what it's worth

by riskable

4 subcomments

I've been saying for quite some time now that AI is going to kill the traditional (free) search engine. This is just another nail in the coffin.
When an AI searches google.com for you, the ads never get shown to the user. Search engines like kagi.com are the future. You'll give the AI your Kagi API key and that'll be it. You won't even need cloud-based AI for that kind of thing! Tiny, local models trained for performing searches on behalf of the user will do it instead.
Soon your OS will regularly pull down AI model updates just like it pulls down software updates today. Every-day users will have dozens of models that are specialized for all sorts of tasks—like searching the Internet. They won't even know what they're for or what they do. Just like your average Linux user doesn't know what the `polkit` or `avahi-daemon` services do.
My hope: This will (eventually) put pressure on hardware manufacturers to include more VRAM in regular PCs/consumer GPUs.

by bakigul

0 subcomment

Human and machine choose looks really good

by FridgeSeal

0 subcomment

Oh look, another company choosing to use <extremely generic, non differentiating term> as their company name.
I get that everyone wants to piggyback on the common-ness of words, but it'd be a lot cooler if they _didn't_.

by apsurd

1 subcomments

Human | AI toggle is cool.
Obligatory: information-dense format is valuable for humans too! But the entire Internet is propped up by ads so seems we can't have nice things.