Web Search Configuration

The webSearch configuration allows you to customize the web search functionality within LibreChat, including search providers, content scrapers, and result rerankers.

Overview

The web search feature consists of three main components:

Search Providers: Services that perform the initial web search
Scrapers: Services that extract content from web pages
Rerankers: Services that reorder search results for better relevance

Example

webSearch

webSearch:
  # Search Provider Configuration
  serperApiKey: "${SERPER_API_KEY}"
  searchProvider: "serper" # Options: "serper", "searxng"
 
  # Scraper Configuration
  firecrawlApiKey: "${FIRECRAWL_API_KEY}"
  firecrawlApiUrl: "${FIRECRAWL_API_URL}"
  scraperType: "firecrawl" # Options: "firecrawl", "serper"
 
  # Reranker Configuration
  jinaApiKey: "${JINA_API_KEY}"
  cohereApiKey: "${COHERE_API_KEY}"
  rerankerType: "jina" # Options: "jina", "cohere"
 
  # General Settings
  scraperTimeout: 7500 # Timeout in milliseconds for scraper requests (default: 7500)
  safeSearch: 1 # Options: 0 (OFF), 1 (MODERATE - default), 2 (STRICT)

Search Providers

serperApiKey

Key	Type	Description	Example
serperApiKey	String	Environment variable name for the Serper API key. If not set in .env, users will be prompted to provide it via UI.	${SERPER_API_KEY}

Note: Get your API key from Serper.dev

searchProvider

Key	Type	Description	Example
searchProvider	String	Specifies which search provider to use.	Options: "serper", "searxng"

Scrapers

firecrawlApiKey

Key	Type	Description	Example
firecrawlApiKey	String	Environment variable name for the Firecrawl API key. If not set in .env, users will be prompted to provide it via UI.	${FIRECRAWL_API_KEY}

Note: Get your API key from Firecrawl.dev

firecrawlApiUrl

Key	Type	Description	Example
firecrawlApiUrl	String	Environment variable name for the Firecrawl API URL. If not set in .env, users will be prompted to provide it via UI.	${FIRECRAWL_API_URL}

Note: This is optional and only needed if you’re using a custom Firecrawl instance.

scraperType

Key	Type	Description	Example
scraperType	String	Specifies which scraper service to use.	Options: "firecrawl", "serper"

Rerankers

jinaApiKey

Key	Type	Description	Example
jinaApiKey	String	Environment variable name for the Jina API key. If not set in .env, users will be prompted to provide it via UI.	${JINA_API_KEY}

Note: Get your API key from Jina.ai

cohereApiKey

Key	Type	Description	Example
cohereApiKey	String	Environment variable name for the Cohere API key. If not set in .env, users will be prompted to provide it via UI.	${COHERE_API_KEY}

Note: Get your API key from Cohere Dashboard

rerankerType

Key	Type	Description	Example
rerankerType	String	Specifies which reranker service to use.	Options: "jina", "cohere"

General Settings

scraperTimeout

Key	Type	Description	Example
scraperTimeout	Number	Timeout in milliseconds for scraper requests.	Default: 7500

safeSearch

Key	Type	Description	Example
safeSearch	Number	Safe search filtering level. 0 = OFF (no filtering), 1 = MODERATE (default), 2 = STRICT (maximum filtering).	Default: 1 (MODERATE)

Note: Safe search levels align with standard search API conventions. MODERATE filtering is enabled by default to provide reasonable content filtering while maintaining search effectiveness.

Notes

API keys can be configured in two ways:
1. Set the environment variables specified in the YAML configuration
2. If environment variables are not set, users will be prompted to provide the API keys via the UI
The configuration supports multiple services for each component (providers, scrapers, rerankers)
If a specific service type is not specified, the system will try all available services in that category
Safe search provides three levels of content filtering: OFF (0), MODERATE (1), and STRICT (2)
Never put actual API keys in the YAML configuration - only use environment variable names

Shared Endpoint Settings Intro