​
Overview

Web Search Onyx can access the internet for questions that require up to date information or for niche information that the LLM may not be certain about. Users can toggle the Web Search Action on the fly to override the LLM’s decision. If Internal Search was used during the research process, Onyx will seamlessly combine web sources with internal documents in both the answer generation and for displaying in the UI.

​
Requirements

To provide Web Search functionality, Onyx requires both the ability to get search results and to be able to parse websites for more complete context. This is broken down into 1) the search provider and 2) the web scraper.

​
Search Providers

Onyx provides multiple search providers (pricing subject to change, please double check):
NameProviderPriceBenefit
Google PSEGoogleFree tier + $5/1000 queriesOfficial Google search results, high trust option for security conscious teams.
SerperSerper.devFree tier + $0.30/1000 queriesFast, and cost-effective
ExaExa.ai$5/1000 queriesAI-optimized with better semantic capabilities

​
Web Scraper

As the Search Providers only give short snippets and metadata, a scraper is used to fetch the full site contents for more complete/reliable answers.
NameRequires ConfigBenefits
Onyx built-inNoNo third parties get access to user queries, free to use
FirecrawlYes, API keyMore performant with better edge case handling