Microsoft is shutting off access to its Bing Search APIs, marking a major shift in its search data strategy that will cut off thousands of developers, startups, and rival search engines from one of the most widely used search indexes on the web.
The tech giant quietly announced that Bing Search APIs will be officially retired on August 11, 2025, after which all existing instances will be “decommissioned completely” and no new customers will be allowed to sign up.
The move is significant and has sent ripples through the developer ecosystem, as it effectively eliminates raw access to Bing’s search data — a lifeline for several third-party platforms that depend on Bing results to power their services.
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While Microsoft has offered a replacement through its AI-integrated service “Grounding with Bing Search” as part of Azure AI Agents, this alternative is far from a one-for-one substitute. It provides search summaries rather than raw, indexable data and is tailored more for chatbot applications than traditional search use cases. Developers do not get access to the full set of search results or metadata — a change that limits flexibility and breaks compatibility for many existing apps.
Smaller Developers Left Behind
Notably, big customers like DuckDuckGo, which has long relied on Bing to power its privacy-first search engine, will retain access to the Bing APIs after the cutoff date, according to a report by Wired. But smaller developers and startups will be locked out, prompting fears of increased consolidation in the web search market and a loss of viable alternatives to Big Tech’s stranglehold.
This marks a culmination of Microsoft’s trend over recent years, during which it quietly raised prices for Bing Search API access, making it increasingly unaffordable for smaller users. Now, with this full deprecation, even those who managed to keep up with rising costs are being forced to find alternatives or shut down.
AI at the Center of Microsoft’s Strategy
Microsoft’s move comes at a time when the company is rapidly pivoting towards AI-centric business models, particularly since the explosive rise of generative AI. Grounding with Bing Search is part of Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI stack, which powers chatbot experiences by fetching and summarizing content from the web. But the pivot comes with trade-offs. Many developers have voiced concerns that Microsoft is replacing a flexible, open search API with a closed system geared more towards enhancing its AI agents than supporting broader use cases.
The replacement service offers structured, filtered outputs optimized for AI prompts rather than full access to search results. This limits transparency and granularity, pushing developers to either adapt their products entirely or abandon Bing’s ecosystem.
Timing and Regulatory Overtones
The timing of the announcement, just days before Microsoft’s Build developer conference, and just a week after the U.S. Department of Justice’s latest action in its antitrust case against Google, is notable. The DOJ is seeking to break up Google’s dominance in the ad tech business, a campaign that has reignited scrutiny of anti-competitive behavior across the tech sector, including concerns over control of access to web search data.
Microsoft, for years the underdog in the search race, now finds itself in a position where it too is cutting off access to key internet infrastructure. This comes at a time when open and diversified access to search data is increasingly seen as critical to breaking monopolistic control over information on the internet.
With Bing Search APIs gone, the field is narrowing. The decision could undermine emerging competitors in the AI and search space that rely on multiple data sources to build smarter, faster tools — companies like Perplexity, Cohere, or Mistral, which are already experimenting with new ways to retrieve and synthesize web information.
One of the few options still standing is Brave Search, an independent engine developed by the privacy-focused browser company Brave. Brave Search not only operates its own independent index, but also offers an API that’s being adopted by AI startups eager to move away from Microsoft and Google dependencies.
The Brave Search API is being praised for being developer-friendly and affordable, with a free tier offering up to 2,000 queries per month, and flexible paid plans for larger needs. This makes it particularly appealing for the smaller developers being cast aside by Microsoft’s latest shift.
This transition marks a turning point in how web data will be accessed in the age of AI. While Microsoft touts this as a move toward a smarter, AI-integrated future, critics say it’s also a blow to transparency, innovation, and competition in the digital economy.
Developers who relied on Bing for everything from academic research tools to search overlays and browser integrations will now be forced to rethink their architecture or shut their services down. And for users, this could mean fewer search tools, less innovation, and increased centralization of how information is discovered and delivered.