AWS Adds Direct Web Search API for Custom Agents and Data Pipelines – Unite.AI

Amazon Web Services announced a standalone web search API for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore on November 11, 2026, allowing applications to retrieve classified web results with a signed call and no gateway to create. AWS bills searches at $7 per 1,000 queries, with the API designed for custom agents, data pipelines, and existing applications.

Prior to this launch, web search on AgentCore was provided via the AgentCore Gateway, which required a gateway, a web search target, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) client. The new InvokeWebSearch instead, operation works via the AWS SDK or AWS CLI with standard AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) credentials and Signature Version 4 authentication, without a separate API key or secret. Results contain text excerpts and, when available, page titles, URLs, and posting times.

Direct search for custom orchestrations

The API is intended for custom agent loops and frameworks such as LangChain or LlamaIndex, as well as non-agent workloads including dashboards, fact-checking pipelines, content enrichment, and monitoring systems. It also allows developers to handle retry, caching, and error handling themselves rather than delegating these functions to a gateway.

The service searches a web index maintained by Amazon. AWS says queries are served within AWS rather than sent to a third-party search engine, and that the operation uses the same search infrastructure as Alexa+, Kiro, Quick and other Amazon products.

Queries can contain up to 200 characters, with callers requesting 1 to 25 results and receiving up to 25 when maxResults is omitted. The domain inclusion and exclusion lists each contain up to 100 entries, and a root domain also corresponds to its subdomains. Publish filters accept UTC timestamps in RFC 3339 format and both publishedAfter AND publishedBefore the limits are inclusive.

Python callers need Boto3 1.43.127 or later; support is also included in langchain-aws 1.9.3 and AgentCore Python SDK 1.26.0. In the AgentCore console, users can test queries with result count, date, and domain settings, inspect result metadata and call latency, and then generate an integration snippet or create a gateway destination.

Identity and private network controls

Callers need bedrock-agentcore:InvokeWebSearch permission on the AWS managed web search tool, the same action and resource used by a gateway’s service role. Service control policies can enforce barriers between accounts, allowing organizations to govern directed search along with other AWS permissions.

For workloads in private subnets, AWS PrivateLink can route calls through an interface endpoint in a virtual private cloud (VPC), keeping traffic on the AWS network without an Internet gateway, NAT gateway, or proxy. Endpoint policies, security groups, subnet placement, and a aws:SourceVpce The IAM condition can limit which entities and network locations can invoke the search.

CloudTrail Records InvokeWebSearch requests as data events, but these are not logged by default. A trace or event data store needs an event selector for AWS::BedrockAgentCore::WebSearch type of resource. The resulting events identify the web search tool and maxResultsnot the search text or filters. The applicable acceptable use terms also require customers to retain and display source citations and links provided with the results.

Gateway availability and boundary

The API measures the same type of usage as the gateway connector but does not incur any charges for the gateway on the direct path. Its default quota is 10 requests per second per account in each region, and customers can request an increase. Availability at launch covers US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Sydney).

AWS still recommends AgentCore Gateway for most agent workloads, especially for deployments that combine MCP-aware tools behind an endpoint, use optional MCP sessions, or enforce an administrator-controlled origin policy across teams. Both paths look for the same index, but the gateway can also authorize callers with JSON web tokens, while the standalone API only uses IAM. Gateway administrators can apply hidden target-level domain lists to calling agents; direct API requests carry their own filters.

The launch makes Amazon’s web index accessible without requiring an application to adopt MCP or the gateway stack. The dividing line is operational control: direct callers own request handling and filtering, while shared agent environments maintain centralized gateway tooling, authentication, and origin policy controls.