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Provider overview

Polyweb puts eight providers behind one search and one fetch call. You choose a provider with routing, and Polyweb calls the vendor for you with a provider key from the vault. Read this page to pick a provider, then use the provider reference for its options.

Compare providers

Section titled “Compare providers”
Provider search fetch Key required Good for
brave yes no yes Web results, or token-budgeted context for an LLM
exa yes yes yes Semantic and deep research search, page contents
firecrawl yes yes yes Clean page text, JS-heavy pages, structured extraction
keenable yes yes no Getting started with no signup
parallel yes yes yes Objective-driven search and excerpts
tavily yes yes no Search tuned for agents, news and finance topics
tinyfish yes yes yes Search and fetch with no per-call charge
you yes yes yes Web search with highlights or full pages

keenable and tavily work out of the box through built-in public credentials, so a fresh install can search before you add any key. Adding your own key gives you higher limits. All other providers need a provider key before Polyweb can use them.

brave has no general fetch endpoint. Route fetch calls to any other provider.

Choose a provider in a request

Section titled “Choose a provider in a request”

Every request accepts a routing object. The default mode is auto, which lets Polyweb choose from the providers your project can use.

{
  "query": "solar panel prices",
  "limit": 5,
  "routing": {"mode": "prefer", "providers": ["exa"], "allow_fallback": true}
}

The same routing object works on REST POST /search and POST /fetch and on the MCP search and fetch tools. See Routing for the modes (auto, prefer, require, fanout) and fallback behavior.

Make a provider available

Section titled “Make a provider available”

A provider runs for a project only after three things are in place:

  1. A provider key exists in the vault, unless the provider is keyless.
  2. The key sits in a key pool.
  3. The pool is bound to the project for the operation you need.

Provider keys never go in .env. Add them in the dashboard under Keys and pools and bind them to a project as described in Provider keys and pools and Project providers.

Limits and costs

Section titled “Limits and costs”

Each provider has its own rate limits (how fast you can call) and budget (how much you can spend). A 429 means slow down, and a 402 usually means the budget is spent. Rate limits and budgets explains both.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”