You’re building an application that needs to answer user questions with current, verifiable information, but you’re worried about AI making things up. That’s a common problem, and MIAPI aims to solve it by grounding its responses in real-time web searches. It’s not a perfect solution, though — it has some specific limitations you’ll need to work around. It’s primarily an API, so don’t expect a user-friendly front end. It’s built for developers, not end-users. You’ll need API knowledge to debug and integrate it effectively.
Grounding AI Answers with Citations
MIAPI functions as an AI-powered API that delivers answers based on real-time web search. Its core purpose is to mitigate AI hallucinations by providing responses with inline citations, source attribution, and confidence scores. This approach helps ensure the factual accuracy of the information it provides. It’s got various modes, including web-grounded answers, a knowledge mode for custom documents, and a search-only mode for raw results. It also includes dedicated endpoints for news and image searches, which is a nice touch for specific use cases. Developers can integrate it into their applications to provide users with fact-checked AI responses.
One of MIAPI’s notable strengths is its OpenAI compatibility. It’s designed as a drop-in replacement for OpenAI’s chat completions API, meaning you’ll only need to change a single URL in your existing code to switch over. This makes it quite convenient for developers already working within the OpenAI ecosystem. The developer claims 98% accuracy and states it "beats Perplexity at 60% less cost," with prices as low as $0.0025 per query. A Reddit user also noted its accuracy, reporting 82% on SimpleQA and over 95% for general queries.
Pricing Structure and Known Constraints
MIAPI provides free access with premium upgrades with query packs that never expire:
- Free — 500 queries/month, 1 API key, 60 req/min (refills monthly)
- Starter ($9) — 2,500 queries ($3.60/1,000)
- Developer ($33) — 10,000 queries ($3.30/1,000)
- Pro ($90) — 30,000 queries ($3.00/1,000)
- Scale ($250) — 100,000 queries ($2.50/1,000)
- Enterprise — Custom pricing, volume discounts, SLA guarantee
Despite its advantages, MIAPI isn’t without its limitations. It has limited language support, which could be a significant hurdle for global applications. There’s also no traditional free trial, though the free version helps. Its caching policy isn’t entirely clear, even with built-in caching that promises repeat queries in 1ms. It doesn’t offer multi-model capability, unlike competitors such as OpenRouter, which provides a unified API for numerous AI models. Native mobile support and visual data analytics aren’t available either. These missing features might necessitate additional development work if your project requires them.
Getting Started with MIAPI
If you’re considering MIAPI for your project, your best first action is to sign up for the free version. This’ll let you test its core functionalities and assess its suitability for your specific needs, especially its accuracy and integration ease, prior to upgrading. You can find more details and sign up at miapi.uk.