Microsoft is all set to more than triple the pricing for its Bing Search APIs across all markets in what can be seen as an effort to recoup its investments into the search engine.

The new pricing will kick in from May 1, 2023, for all Microsoft Bing APIs including Image Search, Video Search, News Search, Visual Search, Entity Search, Web Search, Autosuggest, and Spell Check, the company said in a blog post.

"The new pricing model reflects more accurately the technology investments Bing continues to make to improve Search, including newer experiences such as Bing Visual Search and Bing Entity Search," a Microsoft spokesperson said.  

Last month, Microsoft announced a$10 billion investment in OpenAI after reports claimed that the company was planning to integrate ChatGPT with its search engine.

Microsoft has been betting on the rising popularity of ChatGPT, as it showcases a new way to search the internet and respond to queries using conversational language - different from what Google offers currently in the way of links.  

Google commands more than 91% market share in the internet search category globally, compared to Bing's abysmal 2.95% as of November 2022, according to similarweb.com.

The hike in prices can also be attributed to the addition of OpenAPI's ChatGPT engine to Bing.

"Customers will also benefit from new AI integrations that improve the Bing search index experience," the spokesperson added.

Steep rise in Web Search and Image Search APIs prices

A comparison of the prices reflects a 3x to 10x increase across different tiers for Bing Search and Bing Image Search APIs.

In the S1 category that allows 250 transactions per second, the new pricing for Web Search stands at$25 per 1,000 transactions compared to just$7 per 1,000 transactions.

In the same category, Bing Image Search's new pricing stands at$25 per 25,000 transactions compared to just$7 for the same number of transactions.

In the S2 category, that allows 100 transactions per second, new Web Search pricing stands at$15 per 1,000 transactions compared to just$3 for the same number of transactions. Pricing for Bing Autosuggest for the same category has been raised from$3 per 10,000 transactions to$15.

Other tiers including the optional Bing Statistics Add-on will also see a 10X increase across all tiers.