Web Search
Configure the provider agents use when they need to search the internet.
Web Search lets agents look up current information through the active OpenClaw engine.
Go to Settings > Web Search to enable internet search, configure providers, and choose which provider is active.
Providers
| Provider | Key required | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Brave Search | Yes | General web search |
| Perplexity | Yes | Answer-oriented search with citations |
| Exa | Yes | Semantic research and discovery |
| Tavily | Yes | Agent-focused search and extraction |
| Firecrawl | Yes | Search plus clean page extraction |
| Google / Gemini | Yes | Google-backed provider path |
| xAI | Yes | xAI search provider |
| Moonshot / Kimi | Yes | Kimi search provider |
| MiniMax | Yes | MiniMax search provider |
| DuckDuckGo | No | Simple no-key browsing |
| SearXNG | No API key, base URL required | Self-hosted metasearch |
| Ollama | No API key, base URL required | Local/offline-friendly setups |
Enable Search
- Turn on Internet search.
- Open a provider.
- Add the required API key or base URL.
- Click Save & use or Activate.
Only one provider is active at a time. You can configure multiple providers and switch between them.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is useful for quick no-key testing.
Click DuckDuckGo > Activate. If the provider is active, agents can use basic web search without an API key.
No-key providers can be less reliable than paid search APIs. For launch demos, Brave, Tavily, Exa, or Perplexity usually give more predictable results.
Remote Engines
Web search config belongs to the active engine.
If you configure Brave on Local and then switch to VPS, the VPS does not automatically have that key. Configure the provider again while VPS is active.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| Activate does nothing | Check that the provider is supported by the active OpenClaw version |
| API key provider will not save | Paste a non-empty key |
| SearXNG does not work | Confirm the base URL is reachable from the engine |
| Search works locally but not on VPS | Save the provider config on the VPS engine |
| Agent still says it cannot browse | Confirm Internet search is enabled and a provider is active |