Web search

How it works

For questions that need current information, like this week’s news or today’s prices.

1. 1

   Your model decides a search would help and writes the query.

2. 2

   OpenRouter runs it on the configured engine and returns titles, URLs, and snippets.

3. 3

   Your model answers with citations, and can search again in the same request.

Providers and pricing

The default engine, auto, uses the model provider’s native search on endpoints that advertise it and falls back to Exa otherwise. Set engine explicitly to pin a provider.

Standard model token costs apply to every request.

Using this tool

curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
  "model": "openai/gpt-5.2",
  "tools": [
    {
      "type": "openrouter:web_search"
    }
  ],
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "What were the major AI announcements this week?"
    }
  ]
}'

Benchmarks

Frequently asked questions

Related tools

Search & web

• Web fetch

  Fetch and extract content from URLs

  Search & web