fetchbean quickstart: make your first API call

This guide walks you through everything you need to go from zero to a working fetchbean integration. You’ll create an API key, call the POST /v1/search curated endpoint using your preferred language, and see how to reach any provider directly with the raw POST /v1/run endpoint.

Create an API key

Sign in at fetchbean.com/app and open the API Keys section. Click Create key, give it a name, and copy the value immediately — it starts with fb_ and is shown only once. Store it as the environment variable FETCHBEAN_KEY so it stays out of your source code.

Call a curated tool

Curated tools return the same clean, normalized JSON shape every time, regardless of which provider powers them. Use POST /v1/search to run a web search:

curl https://api.fetchbean.com/v1/search \
  -H "X-API-Key: $FETCHBEAN_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"best vector databases"}'

const res = await fetch('https://api.fetchbean.com/v1/search', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'X-API-Key': process.env.FETCHBEAN_KEY,
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ query: 'best vector databases' })
});
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data.results);

import httpx, os
res = httpx.post(
    'https://api.fetchbean.com/v1/search',
    headers={'X-API-Key': os.environ["FETCHBEAN_KEY"]},
    json={'query': 'best vector databases'}
)
print(res.json()['results'])

A successful search returns results in this shape:

{
  "results": [
    { "title": "Qdrant", "url": "https://qdrant.tech", "snippet": "..." },
    { "title": "Weaviate", "url": "https://weaviate.io", "snippet": "..." }
  ]
}

Or call any provider raw

Use POST /v1/run to reach a specific provider endpoint directly and receive its native, unmodified response. This gives you full access to provider-specific parameters:

curl https://api.fetchbean.com/v1/run \
  -H "X-API-Key: $FETCHBEAN_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"provider":"exa","endpoint":"/search","input":{"query":"best vector databases","numResults":10}}'

fetchbean uses prepaid credits and only charges you for calls that succeed. Provider failures and timeouts are billed at zero — you never pay for an error that wasn’t your fault.

Next steps

Credits & billing

Understand how prepaid credits work and how calls are priced.

Authentication

Learn how to manage API keys and handle authentication errors.

fetchbean: One API key for your AI agent's tools

How to authenticate fetchbean API requests

Get Started

Core Concepts

Guides

Reference

fetchbean quickstart: make your first API call

Next steps

Credits & billing

Authentication

​Next steps

Credits & billing

Authentication

Next steps