Which AI chatbots can search the web in 2026
Blog post from Exa
Five major AI chatbots—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, Gemini, and Claude—offer web search capabilities in 2026, though they differ in availability, automatic search behavior, query transparency, and citation formats. Web-enabled chatbots generally determine whether a question needs current information, convert it into one or more search queries, retrieve and filter relevant passages, and synthesize a cited answer from those sources. ChatGPT and Claude typically decide when to search but can be instructed to do so, while Perplexity searches every query by default. Exa positions its MCP server, APIs, and SDK tools as options for replacing or adding web search in compatible assistants and custom chatbots, emphasizing precision-focused retrieval that supplies only relevant, cited information rather than entire webpages.
| Trend | Post Mentions | Total Month Mentions | Posts | Companies | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCP | 4 | 10,589 | 923 | 216 | +14% |
| Real-time | 3 | 4,852 | 1,086 | 241 | +4% |
| AI Agents | 1 | 5,609 | 1,414 | 272 | -6% |
| AI Coding Assistant | 1 | 1,596 | 558 | 143 | +2% |
| Exa Connect | 1 | 8 | 8 | 1 | 0% |
| LLM | 1 | 6,030 | 1,165 | 243 | +15% |
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