Recently, Microsoft quietly announced its plan to pull the plug on Bing Search APIs (application programming interfaces). Third-party app developers won't have access to the search engine's results from August 11, 2025.
According to Microsoft:
"Bing Search APIs will be retired on August 11, 2025. Any existing instances of Bing Search APIs will be decommissioned completely, and the product will no longer be available for usage or new customer signup."
As such, third-party app developers will need to find an alternative replacement for Bing Search APIs beyond the cutoff date, as they won't have access to Microsoft's search results to power their services.
Interestingly, Microsoft urges affected parties to use “grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents” as a plausible alternative. It's worth noting that Azure AI Agents still use Bing Search on the user's behalf to generate responses.
As Wired reports, the vast majority of customers using Bing Search APIs, including DuckDuckGo, will continue accessing the service beyond the looming cutoff date.
As such, it's mostly smaller app developers that are likely to be left with the short end of the stick, especially if their plan was to use Bing Search APIs to return URLs rather than text-based responses to queries.
Microsoft declined to comment to Wired on whether the decision to close these APIs is related to reducing costs, but it comes soon after Microsoft announced plans to lay off 3% of its workforce, reportedly targeting management first.
Either way, a continued push towards artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI, is on brand for Microsoft's continued strategies and isn't a total surprise. Nevertheless, it will likely come as disappointing news for smaller, independent developers, who may have to make significant changes to their projects.
