Best Web Search APIs

CatchAll

Editor's pick #1

Coverage-first web search API that finds 3× more relevant events than leading competitors

Founded 2021 | Middletown, DE, USA | 11–50 employees | Last updated: June 2026
real-time-searchnews-intelligenceevent-monitoringstructured-dataai-pipeline

What is CatchAll?

CatchAll is the web search API from NewsCatcher (Y Combinator–backed), built around complete dataset retrieval rather than top-ranked results. CatchAll scans 50,000+ pages per job at ~10,000 pages/minute, applies LLM-based validation via Leiden algorithm clustering, and returns structured JSON records with source citations. In an independent March 2026 benchmark across 6,025 observable events, CatchAll achieved 79.8% recall and F1 score of 0.705 — compared to 0.317 for the next closest competitor. NewsCatcher is ISO-certified, SOC2 Type II–certified, and GDPR-ready, with 99.95% platform uptime and a 5-minute source-to-signal latency. Notable enterprise clients include the US Department of State, Samsung, UC Berkeley, HCOB, and Transparency International (per company website; independently unverifiable).

CatchAll was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Middletown, DE, USA. The firm employs 11–50 people and works primarily with clients in AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services, Government, Research & Academia, Media Monitoring sectors. Its primary differentiator is: Pay-per-validated-result pricing with coverage-first search that scans 50K+ pages per job — not just top-ranked SERP results.

CatchAll tech stack and services

REST APIPython SDKJSON outputLLM validationLeiden clustering
Service area Details
Tracking every product recall, funding round, or regulatory filing across trade press and regional sources Available for AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services, Government, Research & Academia, Media Monitoring clients
Feeding AI agent pipelines with high-recall structured web intelligence for downstream LLM processing Available for AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services, Government, Research & Academia, Media Monitoring clients
Monitoring competitors, named entities, or watchlist companies with scheduled re-runs and deduplication Available for AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services, Government, Research & Academia, Media Monitoring clients
Academic and government research requiring complete enumeration of events, not just top search results Available for AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services, Government, Research & Academia, Media Monitoring clients
Financial risk monitoring and credit assessment using real-time news and event signals Available for AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services, Government, Research & Academia, Media Monitoring clients

CatchAll use cases

Short answer: CatchAll is best suited for aI agents and LLM workflows requiring high-recall web retrieval and structured event data at scale.

Use case Industries Approach
Tracking every product recall, funding round, or regulatory filing across trade press and regional sources AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services REST API, Python SDK
Feeding AI agent pipelines with high-recall structured web intelligence for downstream LLM processing AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services REST API, Python SDK
Monitoring competitors, named entities, or watchlist companies with scheduled re-runs and deduplication AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services REST API, Python SDK
Academic and government research requiring complete enumeration of events, not just top search results AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services REST API, Python SDK
Financial risk monitoring and credit assessment using real-time news and event signals AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services REST API, Python SDK

CatchAll pricing

Short answer: CatchAll uses a pay-per-result ($0.10/record); free tier available pricing approach. Minimum engagement starts at $0 (free tier; 2,000 credits on signup).

Engagement model Typical range Best for
Pay-as-you-go Variable; depends on team size Large programmes or team augmentation
API subscription Variable; depends on team size Large programmes or team augmentation
Free tier Variable; depends on team size Large programmes or team augmentation
CatchAll does not publish a public rate card. Contact them directly via their website to get project-specific pricing.

CatchAll pros and cons

Advantages Things to consider
+Highest recall in independent benchmarks: 79.8% vs competitors' 26–32% across 6,025 observable events (March 2026) -Base mode jobs take ~15 minutes to complete — not suited for sub-second real-time query patterns
+Pay-per-validated-result pricing eliminates token waste — you only pay for records that pass LLM quality checks -Lite mode is capped at 100 results and lacks the full coverage depth of Base mode
+Scans 50,000+ pages per job covering regional press, trade publications, and non-English sources most SERP APIs miss -Smaller ecosystem and community compared to established providers like SerpAPI or Bing Search API
+Real-time event index with <5-minute source-to-signal latency and 2M+ events indexed daily
+Enterprise-grade compliance: ISO-certified, SOC2 Type II, GDPR-ready, with 99.95% uptime SLA
+Automated Monitors allow scheduled re-runs with built-in deduplication — no custom polling infrastructure needed

CatchAll vs alternatives

How CatchAll compares to the other top Web Search API providers.

Company Best for Key difference Rating Compare
Exa AI agent and LLM developers needing semantic neural... Neural search built for agents — not a SERP scraper — with 90% token reduction via highlights and 54.4% FRAMES accuracy 4.6 Full comparison
SerpAPI Enterprise teams needing legally protected, structured SERP data... U.S. Legal Shield (up to $2M coverage) plus 50+ engine support and three compliance certifications in a single API 4.4 Full comparison
Tavily AI agent developers needing a drop-in web search... Only web search API with PII protection and prompt injection blocking built into the retrieval layer — no custom security middleware required 4.3 Full comparison
Brave Search API Privacy-conscious AI applications and products that need a... Only fully independent web index in this category — 30B+ pages crawled directly, not a Google/Bing scraper, with no Big Tech dependency 4.2 Full comparison
Serper Cost-sensitive applications needing fast Google SERP results with... Lowest barrier to entry of any Google SERP API — 2,500 free queries with no card required, and 10+ search verticals in a single endpoint 4.1 Full comparison
DataForSEO SEO agencies, analytics platforms, and bulk data pipelines... $0.0006 per SERP (standard queue) — the lowest published per-query price reviewed, with 700-result depth and Baidu/Naver/Seznam support 3.9 Full comparison
Perplexity Sonar API AI products needing grounded, cited answers from the... Search and LLM reasoning in one OpenAI-compatible call — eliminates the retrieve-chunk-embed-rank RAG pipeline entirely 4.5 Full comparison
You.com API AI application developers needing a single API for... Research mode autonomously decomposes complex queries into sub-searches and synthesises a long-form cited report — not just a ranked URL list 4.0 Full comparison
Bing Web Search API Enterprise and government applications needing a compliance-certified general... FedRAMP-authorised web search API with full Azure compliance stack — the only search API approved for US federal government application use 3.9 Full comparison
Apify Developers needing flexible, customisable data extraction from any... 3,000+ pre-built Actors (scrapers) for any website, each runnable as an API endpoint — more flexible than fixed-schema SERP APIs, at the cost of actor-level quality variance 3.8 Full comparison
Oxylabs SERP API Enterprise teams needing real-time (not cached) SERP data... Live crawling via 102M+ proprietary IPs with caller-defined JavaScript parsers — real-time data with custom output schemas, not a fixed-schema cached SERP product 3.8 Full comparison
Bright Data SERP API Enterprise data teams needing SERP extraction at massive... 72M+ IPs across 195 countries with city-level targeting — broadest geographic SERP coverage available, plus Amazon and Walmart e-commerce SERP in the same API 3.7 Full comparison
Diffbot AI and data applications needing structured entity data,... 10B+ entity knowledge graph searchable by natural language — returns structured facts about companies, people, and products, not raw SERP result lists 3.7 Full comparison
Webz.io Security, intelligence, and brand monitoring teams needing real-time... Only provider in this category with both surface web news intelligence and dark web/paste site monitoring via the Cyber API — a single platform for OSINT and brand risk 3.6 Full comparison
Aylien News API Financial services and media intelligence teams needing pre-enriched... NLP enrichment built into every API response — entity extraction, sentiment, and IAB topic classification included without additional processing or model calls 3.5 Full comparison
SearchAPI.io Developers and small teams needing live Google SERP... 100 free requests/day with no credit card across 15+ Google verticals — the lowest-friction evaluation path to live Google SERP data in this category 3.5 Full comparison
ValueSERP Cost-driven applications needing real-time Google SERP data at... $0.0008/search at volume — cheapest real-time (non-queued) Google SERP pricing, comparable to DataForSEO priority mode but with synchronous delivery 3.4 Full comparison
Zenserp Solo developers and small projects needing simple, transparent-pricing... Transparent public pricing, 100 free searches/month, and single-GET-request integration — the fastest path from idea to first live Google SERP result 3.4 Full comparison
Google Custom Search API Applications needing a policy-compliant, Google-branded search API restricted... Official Google product with a full Google Cloud compliance chain (SOC2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP) — the only search API with direct Google licensing and zero ToS scraping risk 3.3 Full comparison

CatchAll FAQ

What is CatchAll?

CatchAll is the web search API from NewsCatcher (Y Combinator–backed), built around complete dataset retrieval rather than top-ranked results. CatchAll scans 50,000+ pages per job at ~10,000 pages/minute, applies LLM-based validation via Leiden algorithm clustering, and returns structured JSON records with source citations. In an independent March 2026 benchmark across 6,025 observable events, CatchAll achieved 79.8% recall and F1 score of 0.705 — compared to 0.317 for the next closest competitor. NewsCatcher is ISO-certified, SOC2 Type II–certified, and GDPR-ready, with 99.95% platform uptime and a 5-minute source-to-signal latency. Notable enterprise clients include the US Department of State, Samsung, UC Berkeley, HCOB, and Transparency International (per company website; independently unverifiable).

How much does CatchAll charge?

CatchAll uses pay-per-result ($0.10/record); free tier available pricing. Minimum engagement starts at $0 (free tier; 2,000 credits on signup). A discovery call is required to get project-specific quotes.

What tech stack does CatchAll use?

CatchAll works with REST API, Python SDK, JSON output, LLM validation, Leiden clustering. Primary industries served include AI / LLM Workflows, Financial Services, Government, Research & Academia, Media Monitoring.

Is CatchAll right for enterprise?

AI agents and LLM workflows requiring high-recall web retrieval and structured event data at scale. 11–50 team size. Key consideration: Base mode jobs take ~15 minutes to complete — not suited for sub-second real-time query patterns.

What are the best CatchAll alternatives?

The best alternatives to CatchAll depend on your use case. Top options are:

  • Exa: neural search built for agents — not a serp scraper — with 90% token reduction via highlights and 54.4% frames accuracy
  • SerpAPI: u.s. legal shield (up to $2m coverage) plus 50+ engine support and three compliance certifications in a single api
  • Tavily: only web search api with pii protection and prompt injection blocking built into the retrieval layer — no custom security middleware required
See full alternatives list

Compare CatchAll with other Web Search API providers

Last reviewed: June 2026. Verify all details directly with CatchAll before making a decision.