Web search and reading
Let your agents search the public web and read pages, and how web usage is billed.
Your agents can reach the public web. When the agent's web tools are
turned on, it can look things up, read documentation, and pull in the
latest information instead of relying only on what's already in your
workspace.
What your agents can do
- Search the web — find relevant pages for a question and get back a ranked list of links with titles and short descriptions.
- Read a page — open a specific URL and get its main content as clean text, with ads and navigation stripped out.
- Read several pages at once — hand the agent a handful of links and it reads them all in one step.
Search returns links only — the agent decides which pages are worth opening and reads just those, so it stays fast and focused.
Freshness
By default a page may be served from a short-lived cache (up to two days old), which is faster. If you need the very latest version of a page, just ask the agent for an up-to-date copy and it will fetch a fresh one.
A note on trust
Web pages are outside content. Your agents are instructed to treat anything they read as untrusted — they use it to answer your question, but won't follow instructions hidden inside a page.
Billing
Web usage is metered and billed to your workspace, the same way AI usage is. Each search and page read consumes a small amount of usage, shown on your billing page under Web Usage for the current period.
You can bring your own Firecrawl key (the service that powers web search) in Settings → Billing. When you do, Firecrawl bills you directly and Monad only adds its surcharge — exactly like bringing your own AI key. Leave it unset and web tools run on Monad's key, billed as usage plus surcharge.
Adding your own key
- Create an account at Firecrawl and copy
an API key from your Firecrawl dashboard (it starts with
fc-). - In Monad, go to Settings → Billing and find the Web search & reading key card.
- Paste the key and choose Save key. It's stored encrypted and used only for this workspace's web tools.
You can replace or remove the key anytime — removing it switches web usage back to Monad's shared key.
Replacing or removing your key
From the same Settings → Billing → Web search & reading key card:
- Replace swaps the saved key for a new one — handy for rotating it on a schedule or after a credential leak.
- Remove clears the saved key. Web tools fall back to Monad's shared
key and billing returns to
credits + surcharge. You'll be asked to confirm before the key is removed.
Who can manage the key
Only workspace members with the Manage billing permission see the input field. Other members can see whether a key is configured (and the masked hint) but can't change it. The same permission covers the Replace and Remove buttons.
Troubleshooting
- "Firecrawl keys must start with 'fc-'" — the key you pasted isn't a Firecrawl key. Copy a fresh one from your Firecrawl dashboard.
- Web tools say web search isn't configured — there's no key in play: your workspace hasn't added one and the platform key isn't set for this environment. Add your own key, or ask your workspace owner.
- Searches or page reads start failing after I saved a key — your Firecrawl account may be out of credits. Check your Firecrawl dashboard, or remove the key to fall back to the shared key while you sort it out.