What search API are you guys actually using these days?

Lately I have been looking at search APIs for my small thing, and I honestly didn’t think there would be that many options.

I keep running into names like SerpAPI Tavily Brave Search Exa and SearchAPI, but it’s kind of hard to tell which ones people actually stick with, versus just tossing out recommendations because they’re sponsored or whatever.

I’m not trying to build anything huge, more like something that needs dependable web search results. Good docs would help, and it’d be great if I’m not getting throttled or rate-limited every five minutes. You know, that's kind of annoying.

So for people who have tried a few of these:

Which one did you end up using most of the time?

Any of them you wound not recommend?

If you pay for one… is it actually worth it, or do the free tiers cover most small projects?

Also I would rather hear real experiences, like “this happened to me” rather than another blog post that claims every API is “the best”, because yeah, sure.