Configuring Search & Research APIs
Last Updated: July 15, 2026
Cost Optimization Tip
We selected Exa, Apify, Jina Reader, and RapidAPI because they provide generous, recurring monthly free tiers that keep your daily operating costs near zero.
Follow these instructions to get the required API keys.
1. Exa Deep Search
This API powers our anti-hallucination, citation-verified factual research.
- Go to dashboard.exa.ai and sign up.
- Locate the API Keys section and generate a new key.
Figure 2.1: Locating the API key in the Exa Dashboard.
- Copy the key and paste it into the Exa API Key field in your ClusterWriter Settings.
2. Apify API Token
This API is used for deep Google SERP scraping and Reddit structure discovery.
- Sign up at console.apify.com.
- Navigate to Settings > Integrations or API Tokens to find your Personal API token.
Figure 2.2: Fetching the Apify API token from account settings.
- Copy the token and paste it into the Apify API Key field in ClusterWriter.
3. Jina Reader
This tool crawls competitor web pages and converts them into LLM-friendly Markdown format.
- Visit jina.ai/reader/ and create an account.
- Generate an API Key from the reader platform dashboard.
Figure 2.3: Generating Jina Reader credentials.
- Copy the key and paste it into the Jina Reader API Key field in ClusterWriter.
4. RapidAPI (SteadyAPI for Reddit)
This connects to Reddit to extract community discussions, questions, and authentic user reviews for E-E-A-T signals.
You MUST subscribe to the SteadyAPI Free tier on RapidAPI first, or your API key will fail authentication check.
- Sign up at rapidapi.com.
- Search for the SteadyAPI Reddit scraper and click to subscribe to their Free Tier.
Figure 2.4: Subscribing to the SteadyAPI Reddit plan.
- Locate your X-RapidAPI-Key in the endpoints tester menu.
Figure 2.5: Locating the X-RapidAPI-Key header in the endpoint tester.
- Copy this key and paste it into the RapidAPI Key field in ClusterWriter Settings.