Anthropic launches an API for AI-powered web search

Ken Metral

07 May 2025 — 1 min read

Credit: Anthropic PBC

Anthropic has announced the launch of a new web search API for its Claude AI models, allowing developers to build applications that can access real-time, web-based information. This marks a significant step in making Claude a more dynamic, up-to-date assistant capable of retrieving the latest facts, data, and insights from across the internet.

Real-Time AI, No Infrastructure Needed

With this new API, developers can now augment Claude’s general knowledge with live web results—without having to build or manage their own search infrastructure.

“Developers can now build AI solutions that tap into current information without needing to manage their own web search infrastructure,” Anthropic said in its official release.

When enabled, Claude evaluates each user prompt to decide if real-time information is needed. If so, it:

Generates a search query
Retrieves and analyzes results
Provides answers with citations
Refines queries as needed through iterative searching

Developers can customize search behavior, choose which domains Claude is allowed (or prohibited) to access, and even control usage at the organization level.

Use Cases: From General Info to Coding Support

The update is especially useful for applications that require up-to-date knowledge, such as:

News summarization tools
Financial assistants
Travel planning apps
Technical Q&A bots

In addition, Anthropic is bringing this capability to Claude Code, its AI tool designed to assist developers with programming tasks. By enabling web search in Claude Code, users can now fetch latest API documentation, code libraries, and technical articles, enhancing productivity and accuracy.

Claude Code remains in beta as part of a research preview, but the addition of web search brings it closer to becoming a full-fledged AI developer assistant.

Competitive Context

Anthropic’s move follows a broader trend in AI: connecting models to external tools to overcome knowledge limitations. Google, OpenAI, and Perplexity have all developed real-time retrieval features or search integrations to help their models stay current.

With this release, Claude joins the growing wave of AI assistants that blend foundational model knowledge with live, web-sourced intelligence—offering developers a flexible, intelligent, and customizable solution.

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