Upgrade from Beta to GA

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Highlights

1. search_queries is now required — At least one non-empty query must be provided. In Beta, only one of objective or search_queries was required.
2. Settings reorganized under advanced_settings — source_policy, fetch_policy, excerpt settings, and max_results are now nested under a single new advanced_settings object (previously top-level fields). See Advanced Settings for more details.
3. New location field — Set advanced_settings.location to an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g., "us", "gb", "de", "jp") to geo-target search results. Only a subset of countries are currently supported; unsupported or invalid values are ignored with a warning.
4. Updated modes — V1 has four modes (turbo, fast, basic, advanced), with advanced as the new default. For most use cases, map both fast and one-shot to fast, and map agentic to advanced. V1 fast delivers high-quality results in around 700ms and is the recommended default. V1 basic remains available if you want longer excerpts similar to the old one-shot output.
   • fast: The suggested replacement for Beta fast and one-shot, and the recommended default for most agents. It delivers high-quality results in around 700ms.
   • basic: Returns extended snippets per result and works best with 2-3 high-quality search_queries. Choose it when you want longer excerpts per source in a single call, similar to the old one-shot-style output.
   • advanced (default): The V1 equivalent of Beta agentic. Provides higher quality with more advanced retrieval and compression. Best for complex queries where result quality matters more than latency.
   • turbo (new in V1): A lower-latency, lower-cost mode for real-time, high-volume grounding, with no Beta equivalent. It typically returns results in around 200ms. See Search Modes.

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Overview of Changes

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Migration Example

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Before (Beta)

curl https://api.parallel.ai/v1beta/search \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $PARALLEL_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "objective": "Find latest information about Parallel Web Systems. Focus on new product releases, benchmarks, or company announcements.",
    "search_queries": ["Parallel Web Systems products", "Parallel Web Systems announcements"],
    "mode": "fast",
    "excerpts": {
      "max_chars_per_result": 10000,
      "max_chars_total": 50000
    }
  }'

​

After (V1)

curl https://api.parallel.ai/v1/search \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $PARALLEL_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "objective": "Find latest information about Parallel Web Systems. Focus on new product releases, benchmarks, or company announcements.",
    "search_queries": ["Parallel Web Systems products", "Parallel Web Systems announcements"],
    "mode": "fast",
    "max_chars_total": 50000,
    "advanced_settings": {
      "excerpt_settings": {
        "max_chars_per_result": 10000
      }
    }
  }'

from parallel import Parallel
import os

client = Parallel(api_key=os.environ["PARALLEL_API_KEY"])

search = client.search(
    objective="Find latest information about Parallel Web Systems. Focus on new product releases, benchmarks, or company announcements.",
    search_queries=["Parallel Web Systems products", "Parallel Web Systems announcements"],
    mode="fast",
    max_chars_total=50000,
    advanced_settings={"excerpt_settings": {"max_chars_per_result": 10000}},
)

print(search.results)

import Parallel from "parallel-web";

const client = new Parallel({ apiKey: process.env.PARALLEL_API_KEY });

const search = await client.search({
    objective: "Find latest information about Parallel Web Systems. Focus on new product releases, benchmarks, or company announcements.",
    search_queries: ["Parallel Web Systems products", "Parallel Web Systems announcements"],
    mode: "fast",
    max_chars_total: 50000,
    advanced_settings: { excerpt_settings: { max_chars_per_result: 10000 } },
});

console.log(search.results);

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Additional Resources

• Search Quickstart - Get started with the Search API
• Best Practices - Optimize your search requests
• Search MCP - Use Search via Model Context Protocol
• API Reference - Complete parameter specifications