Microsoft is phasing out its public Bing Search APIs, including Search v7 and Custom Search, with a final service date of August 11, 2025. This move impacts all users, from free to paid tiers, compelling developers to transition to alternatives. Following this date, Microsoft confirmed that new customer signups will cease, and existing instances will be disabled, as stated in a retirement notice.
The company’s Bing Web Search API page now prominently displays a banner affirming, “Product to be retired Bing Search and Bing Custom Search APIs will be retired on 11th August 2025. New deployments are not available and existing resources will be disabled. Learn more.”
For developers integrating search into AI applications, Microsoft is steering them towards its “Grounding with Bing Search” feature within the broader Azure AI Agent Service. This service aims to provide AI agents with real-time web data to enhance their responses.
This strategic shift requires developers to adapt to a new service architecture, API model, and associated costs, detailed on Microsoft’s pricing page. Critical considerations include data handling protocols, as data may be transferred outside standard Azure compliance boundaries, and strict adherence to citation display requirements outlined in Microsoft’s Use and Display Requirements.
The transition also means grappling with the terms of the Grounding with Bing Search Terms of Use. Microsoft Learn documentation clarifies that when this feature is used, customer data is transferred to the Bing service, which operates under different compliance standards than the Azure AI Agent Service. Developers bear the responsibility of assessing if this meets their needs, though Microsoft notes that only the search query and resource key, not end-user-specific information, are sent to Bing.
Navigating The Transition
Microsoft advises users of the outgoing Bing Search APIs to review their usage and begin planning their transition promptly. The company specifically recommends its Grounding with Bing Search as part of the Azure AI Agent Service offering for AI scenarios. Affected resources can be identified in the Azure portal, and for specific questions, users are directed to email Bing API’s Search Partner Support rather than opening standard support tickets.
Setting up “Grounding with Bing Search” involves creating a dedicated resource, achievable through the Azure portal or programmatically, which may first require registering Bing Search as an Azure resource provider. This resource is then linked to an Azure AI Agent, often configured via the Azure AI Foundry portal.
However, some developers have reported challenges. A Microsoft Learn Q&A page from March 2025 highlighted user difficulties with the new service, including integration complexities with C# SemanticKernel (a .NET SDK for integrating AI models) and the Azure OpenAI assistants endpoint, which was still in preview.
Developers grappling with the Bing Search API retirement expressed significant frustration regarding the mandated transition to the Grounding with Bing Search feature within Azure AI Agents. They argued that the new approach introduces substantial complexity compared to the relatively simple v7 API, citing difficulties with integration, particularly for users of frameworks like C# Semantic Kernel.
Additional pain points included the lack of Infrastructure-as-Code support like Bicep or ARM templates for the new grounding resource, requiring manual deployment steps, and confusing documentation that didn’t align with the actual Azure environment. Furthermore, users voiced concerns about the apparent dependency on the Azure “assistants” feature, which remains in preview and lacks straightforward portal configuration for knowledge tools, alongside unease about data usage terms associated with the new service impacting enterprise data sovereignty needs.
Further criticism surfaced on a blog post on bitbasti.com in March 2025, which claimed, “From one day to the next, Azure decided to remove the Bing Azure API. Without ANY notice period, they disabled the creation of a new API resource in Azure.”, regarding the Bing API removal and issues creating new resources even before an earlier March 6, 2025, retirement announcement for “BingSearchAPIs with Your LLM.” This earlier retirement affected specific partner resources (S15-S18).
Understanding The Azure AI Agent Service
The Azure AI Agent Service, which incorporates the Grounding with Bing Search tool, entered public preview in early 2025. Microsoft positions this as a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling AI agents. It is part of Azure AI Foundry and designed to automate enterprise workflows by integrating with tools like Azure Logic Apps and Microsoft Fabric, utilizing the Azure AI Foundry SDK.
In a Microsoft Tech Community blog post from November 2024, announcing the then-upcoming preview, the company stated, “Inspired by our customers’ needs and the promise of autonomous AI agents, today at Ignite 2024, we are announcing the upcoming public preview of Azure AI Agent Service, a set of feature-rich, managed capabilities that brings together all the models, data, tools, and services that enterprises need to automate business processes of any complexity.”
The service aims to bridge the gap between LLM limitations and real-time web data, as highlighted in a Bing Blogs post from January 2025, which introduced the Grounding with Bing Search feature.
Data Handling And Compliance In The New Model
A significant aspect for developers migrating to Grounding with Bing Search is the data handling model. Microsoft Learn documentation explicitly states that customer data, specifically the search query and resource key, is transferred outside the Azure compliance boundary to the Grounding with Bing Search service. This service, as Microsoft clarifies, is not subject to the same data processing terms or compliance standards as the main Azure AI Agent Service.
Developers are responsible for ensuring this arrangement meets their requirements. The mandatory display of website URLs and Bing search query URLs in custom interfaces is also a key compliance point.
While Microsoft assures that no end-user-specific information beyond the query and resource key is sent to Bing, the shift in data processing location and terms requires careful consideration by organizations, especially those with stringent data sovereignty and compliance mandates. The Grounding with Bing Search tool is compatible with most Azure OpenAI models supported by the Agent Service, though specific exceptions are documented by Microsoft.
