Pi Coding Agent added web search support through the pi-web-providers package. The default setup points to DuckDuckGo's unofficial API, which is free but unreliable at scale due to aggressive rate limiting and bot detection. Brave dropped its free tier in February 2026 and now requires $5/month minimum. Here is how to set up a reliable search provider with a genuine free tier.
The provider reliability problem
DuckDuckGo works in development: low volume, single-user, no rate pressure. In a real coding session where the agent makes 20-30 searches, DuckDuckGo starts throttling and returning empty results. The agent falls back to training data, which may be outdated for fast-moving libraries and APIs. A reliable search provider eliminates this class of degradation.
Configuring Scavio as a provider
Add Scavio as a custom HTTP provider in Pi's configuration. The 250 free credits per month cover light coding sessions (about 10 searches per day). Heavier usage fits the $30/month tier.
{
"web_search": {
"provider": "custom_http",
"config": {
"url": "https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/search",
"method": "POST",
"headers": {
"x-api-key": "your_scavio_api_key",
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
"body_template": {
"platform": "google",
"query": "{{query}}"
},
"result_path": "organic",
"title_field": "title",
"url_field": "link",
"snippet_field": "snippet"
}
}
}Multi-platform bonus for coding agents
By changing the platform field, Pi can search Reddit for community solutions (many coding answers live in Reddit threads, not Stack Overflow), YouTube for video tutorials, and Google for documentation. The same API key and config structure works for all platforms, just with a different body template.
Free tier math
250 free credits per month. At 25 coding days per month, that is 10 searches per day. The free tier covers light daily usage. For heavier use, the paid tier at $30/month for 7,000 credits covers even intensive daily coding with search-heavy research sessions.