# Grounding with Bing Search vs SerpKite (slim)

> SerpKite scores 67.6 (B) to Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B) for web search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serpkite.md (~6,500 tokens) · this version ~3,880 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serpkite.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serpkite
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

SerpKite scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Grounding with Bing Search leads on security & auth. Both do web search.

- Grounding with Bing Search: B 63.7, rank #502 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bing-grounding.min.md
- SerpKite: B 67.6, rank #313 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serpkite.min.md
- Grounding with Bing Search, good for Teams already building on Foundry Agent Service who want cited answers from Bing without handling a search key. Ahead on Security & auth, 79 against 37. Also No incidents deducted, where SerpKite loses 3 points for them.
- SerpKite, good for Agents that want Google results and the top pages as Markdown in one call at a low per-1,000 price, with spend caps per key. Ahead on Reliability, 75 against 68; Schema & documentation, 90 against 68; Agent ergonomics, 97 against 61; Payments & pricing, 40 against 20; Transparency & trust, 77 against 66. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | Grounding with Bing Search | SerpKite |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 68 | 75 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 68 | 90 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 61 | 97 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 79 | 37 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 80 | 80 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 66 | 77 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Grounding with Bing Search | SerpKite |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Microsoft | SerpKite (Anastasia Klimova, trading as SerpKite) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses` | `https://api.serpkite.com/v1/search` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for web search | $14 per 1,000 requests | not published |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the customer's Microsoft agreement and the separate Grounding with Bing terms of use, which exclude it from the Microsoft Data Protection Addendum | Proprietary service under SerpKite's terms of service. The SDKs (TypeScript, Python, Go, LangChain, Vercel AI SDK) and the MCP connection repository on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 23 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.SerpKite/serpkite` |
| Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-11-01 | 2026-10-03 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2026-10-03 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 809 npm/wk, 376 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, Grounding with Bing Search +42: Grounding with Bing Search 79 (Callers authenticate to the Foundry project with Microsoft Entra ID tokens and RBAC roles (Foundry User to run agents, Foundry Project Manager to add connections), with just-in-time Contributor through Entra PIM for provisioning. The Bing resource key sits in a project connection and the agent never holds it. No key in a URL (28 of 30). The tools only read. Custom Search confines grounding to configured public domains, and an admin can turn web search off for a whole subscription. There is no per-agent read-only toggle to set, since the tools have no write path (15 of 20). The web search page tells developers to treat web search results as untrusted input and to keep secrets and personal data out of prompts, and the tool best practices page says the same of all tool outputs. Raw results are not passed back to the caller (10 of 15). Run steps show each tool call and the Bing query sent, and Azure's activity log covers resource changes. No per-query audit log for Bing was found (10 of 15). Microsoft runs a coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy and bounty programmes through MSRC. microsoft.com's security.txt passed its Expires date on 23 September 2026 and still carries it on 6 November, and the Azure compliance attestations are not shown to cover a service whose data leaves the compliance boundary (16 of 20). 28 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 16 = 79.); SerpKite 37 (Many keys per account, each revocable and rotatable with an optional monthly credit limit, stored as SHA-256 hashes, with no scopes. Since 9 October the MCP server also takes OAuth (authorisation code with PKCE, dynamic client registration, rotating refresh tokens, one `mcp` scope), each connection running as a named, revocable API key, while REST still needs a key (20). The docs allow the key as `?api_key=` on GET requests (minus 10). Search is read-only, and per-key limits and an account spend cap bound cost, but there's no read-only key, and the MCP server exposes crawl alongside search with no confirmation step we could see (10). Results include third-party snippets and full page Markdown, and we found no prompt-injection guidance (0). The dashboard request log keeps per-call metadata (endpoint, status, credits, key) for 31 days with CSV export, and each key records who created it (12). security.txt returns 404. The security page has a disclosure policy with acknowledgement in 2 business days, no paid bug bounty and SOC 2 marked as not yet started (5).)
- Agent ergonomics, SerpKite +36: Grounding with Bing Search 61 (Read as a server-side search tool inside an agent run. The tools return a model's answer with citations rather than raw results, and `search_context_size` sets how much context web search uses. A caller can't size or inspect the result set itself, since the Bing tools never return their output. Custom Search confines grounding to chosen domains without code (18 of 25). `count`, freshness, market and language filters, and domain restriction through Custom Search. No pagination or offset (13 of 20). Troubleshooting tables give causes and fixes for connection ID, RBAC and 429 problems, but the tools document no error codes (8 of 20). Searches only read, so a retry is safe apart from the per-transaction charge. No MCP annotations are documented for the toolbox's web search tool (10 of 20). The web_search route needs only a project, a model deployment and the Foundry User role. bing_grounding also needs a paid Bing resource and a project connection. SDKs in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java (12 of 15). Prompt caching gets no hits with the Bing tools, because they add a timestamp to every request. 18 + 13 + 8 + 10 + 12 = 61.); SerpKite 97 (`format=markdown` or `compact`, `fields` projection, `num` and an `X-Tokens-Estimate` header size REST responses. The MCP server now has 23 tools with no toolsets or read-only subset we could find (22). `page`, `num` up to 100, country, language, location, time, domain include, exclude and boost, date bounds, `highlights` and `max_tokens` on extract (20). Stable error codes with a retry column, and errors are never billed (20). Searches are read-only, failed and empty calls are refunded, and batch creation takes `Idempotency-Key`. Since 9 October 2026 the changelog says every MCP tool carries `readOnlyHint`, `destructiveHint`, `idempotentHint` and `openWorldHint`, with all read-only except `crawl`, and on 2 November the MCP page says every tool is read-only except `crawl` and `research`, which start paid tasks, and none is destructive (20). Only `q` or `url` is required, and official SDKs exist for TypeScript, Python and Go with retries built in (15). 22+20+20+20+15 = 97.)
- Schema & documentation, SerpKite +22: Grounding with Bing Search 68 (The tools are typed in the official SDKs (BingGroundingTool, BingCustomSearchPreviewTool, WebSearchTool) in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java, and the toolbox exposes web search as an MCP tool. No public OpenAPI description of the Responses tool types was confirmed from the pages read (10 of 25). Microsoft Learn serves each page as Markdown with `accept=text/markdown`, though learn.microsoft.com/llms.txt answers 404 (10). The pages say what each of four web grounding routes is for and when to choose it, when to use Custom Search instead, and not to ask the model to summarise a whole page (17 of 20). Parameters are typed with defaults and limits in prose, `count` 1 to 50 with default 5, freshness values and a date-range form, market and language formats, `search_context_size` low, medium or high (11 of 15). Examples in Python, C#, TypeScript, Java and REST with expected output, and troubleshooting tables for connection ID, authentication and 429 problems, but no error codes or bodies for the tools (10 of 15). Requests carry `api-version=v1` on the toolbox, SDK changelogs are dated and a monthly What's New page lists new articles, the latest for August 2026 (10 of 15). 10 + 10 + 17 + 11 + 10 + 10 = 68.); SerpKite 90 (Public OpenAPI 3.1 spec (version 1.12.7 on 2 November 2026, 41 paths and 47 operations) at serpkite.com/openapi/serp-api.yaml (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown twin of every docs page (10). Endpoint descriptions state purpose and when to use them, and the guides cover which tool to pick. The MCP tool definitions aren't public and `tools/list` needs a key, so we read the MCP docs table and the matching descriptions in the MIT AI SDK package, which state purpose and some when-to-use lines but not when not to (12). Typed parameters with 64 enums in the spec, documented ranges and strict validation that rejects unknown parameters with a 400 naming the replacement. We couldn't confirm the MCP JSON Schemas (13). curl, TypeScript, Python and Go examples on each page, and an errors page with 14 codes and what to do about each (15). Versioned `/v1` paths and a dated API changelog (15).)
- Payments & pricing, SerpKite +20: Grounding with Bing Search 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). $14 per 1,000 transactions for Grounding with Bing Search and Custom Search, published on microsoft.com without a login (20). No free tier for Grounding with Bing, and an Azure subscription needs a card, as on the Azure Translator listing (0). A person signs up for Azure, creates a Foundry project and, for bing_grounding, a Bing resource (0).); SerpKite 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 in llms.txt, the OpenAPI spec or the pricing page (0). Per-pack and per-credit prices published without a login, $1.00 to $0.60 per 1,000 (20). Free credits on signup and 1,000 a month with no card, per the quickstart and home page (20). A person signs in by email, GitHub or Google in a browser (0).)
- Transparency & trust, SerpKite +11: Grounding with Bing Search 66 (Closed service. The terms of use, updated November 2025, are separate from the Online Services terms and sit under the customer's Microsoft agreement (15 of 30). The docs and the terms agree that the Data Protection Addendum and the Product Terms' privacy and security terms don't apply, that Microsoft and the customer are independent controllers, and that the query and parameters leave the Azure compliance and geographic boundary. The terms defer storage and use of query data to the general Microsoft Privacy Statement and state no retention period (15 of 30). The Bing Search APIs retirement was announced on 16 May 2025 for 11 August 2025, under three months' notice, and the web search page marks the Deep Research tool deprecated with a replacement. Microsoft's lifecycle policy covers Azure services, but no deprecation terms for Grounding with Bing were found (10 of 20). Data location for Bing processing isn't stated, and no sub-processor list for it was found (5 of 20). 15 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 45.); SerpKite 77 (Closed API under terms that name the operator, an Ontario address and governing law, with the SDKs and the MCP connection repository MIT (18). The privacy policy, DPA page, retention doc and security page agree that query text of successful requests isn't logged, usage metadata lasts 31 days and batch results 24 hours. On 26 October failed and empty requests began keeping their query for 24 hours, and the changelog says the privacy policy, terms and DPA were updated the same day (27). The terms promise 30 days' notice before removing an endpoint, with exceptions for changes forced by a third party. AI Overview, AI Mode and Lens were removed in the first week without notice under that exception, and the reviews limit of 16 October came the same way, while a batch price change for 23 November 2026 was announced ahead (14). Subprocessors named with purpose and location, including Contabo in Germany, Cloudflare, Paddle, Resend, PostHog EU and Better Stack, with 30 days' notice of changes (20).)
- Reliability, SerpKite +7: Grounding with Bing Search 68 (Graded on the hosted lines, for the Foundry Agent Service tools agents call. Azure status page with post-incident reviews and a Foundry Agent Service component (20). The history page read on 6 November lists one review in the 90 days from 8 August that names Foundry Agent Service, intermittent failures and latency in Sweden Central from 10:03 to 15:58 UTC on 29 September 2026. It was one region and partial, and the review doesn't name Grounding with Bing, so minor only, the reading the Azure Translator listing got for the same review (20). The pricing page publishes 150 transactions a second and 1 million a day for each Grounding with Bing resource (15). The web search troubleshooting table says to answer 429 with exponential backoff and retries. No Retry-After or tool-specific overload guidance was found, and searches have no side effects (8 of 15). No SLA naming Grounding with Bing was found. The terms make it a First Party Consumption Service apart from the Online Services terms, and the Online Services SLA document wasn't opened (0). Grounding with Bing Custom Search is marked preview and Grounding with Bing Search is not, but no page read states general availability for it or for the web_search tool, and the .NET SDK is in preview (5 of 10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 8 + 0 + 5 = 68.); SerpKite 75 (Hosted API, read with the hosted lines. Better Stack status page at status.serpkite.com with four monitors (api.serpkite.com/healthz, dashboard API, dashboard, website) and daily bars (20). Monitoring began on 2 October 2026, so the record covers 31 days of the 90 from 4 August. The page's own figures give 99.978 per cent uptime over 30 days for the API health monitor and 99.971 for the dashboard API, the 5 October check saw 29 to 41 minutes of downtime on each monitor on 2 October and 19 seconds on 3 October, and the feed has never carried an incident post. No outage reached an hour. A readable record shorter than 90 days with nothing major scores 15, as this run settled for short records. Rate limits published per key, 5 to 100 requests a second by pack (15). 429 `rate_limited` with Retry-After, backoff guidance for 429 and 503, and `Idempotency-Key` on batch creation (15). The terms say self-serve plans have no uptime guarantee and an enterprise SLA sits in a separate agreement we couldn't read (0). v1 API with no beta or preview label (10). 20+15+15+15+0+10 = 75.)