Microsoft is set to more than triple the prices of its Bing search APIs in all markets in what can be seen as an effort to recoup its investments in the search engine.
The new pricing will take effect on May 1, 2023 for all Microsoft Bing APIs, including image search, video search, news search, visual search, entity search, web search, auto-suggest and spell check, the company said in a blog post.
“The new pricing model more accurately reflects the technology investments Bing continues to make to improve search, including newer experiences like Bing Visual Search and Bing Entity Search,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Microsoft last month announced a $10 billion investment in OpenAI after reports claimed the company planned to integrate ChatGPT with its search engine.
Microsoft has been banking on the growing popularity of ChatGPT, as it shows a new way to search the Internet and answer queries using a conversational language, different from what Google currently offers in the form of links.
Google has more than 91% market share in the Internet search category globally, compared to Bing’s abysmal 2.95% as of November 2022, according to similarweb.com.
The price increase can also be attributed to the addition of the OpenAPI ChatGPT engine to Bing.
“Customers will also benefit from new AI integrations that enhance the Bing search index experience,” the spokesperson added.
Sharp price increase for web search and image search APIs
A price comparison reflects a 3x to 10x increase at different levels for the Bing Search and Bing Image Search APIs.
In the S1 category that allows 250 transactions per second, the new price for web search is $25 per 1,000 transactions compared to just $7 per 1,000 transactions.
In the same category, the new price for Bing Image Search is $25 for every 25,000 transactions compared to just $7 for the same number of transactions.
In the S2 category, which allows 100 transactions per second, the new web search price is $15 per 1,000 transactions compared to just $3 for the same number of transactions. The Bing Autosuggest price for the same category increased from $3 per 10,000 transactions to $15.
Other tiers, including the optional Bing Stats plugin, will also experience a 10x boost across all tiers.
Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.
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