# Web Tools Documentation

OpenClaw provides two lightweight web utilities for agent tasks:

## Core Tools

**web_search** enables querying the internet through either Brave Search API or Perplexity Sonar. The default Brave provider returns structured results (title, URL, snippet) while Perplexity offers AI-synthesized answers with citations from real-time web search.

**web_fetch** performs HTTP retrieval and converts HTML to readable markdown or plain text format. It notably does **not** execute JavaScript, making it unsuitable for dynamic content sites requiring browser automation.

## Provider Comparison

The two search options present distinct tradeoffs:

- **Brave** (default): Fast structured output, free tier availability, but traditional search format
- **Perplexity**: Synthesized responses with source attribution, though requiring separate API access

Configuration specifies your chosen provider through the `tools.web.search.provider` setting.

## Setup Requirements

For Brave, users must create a Brave Search API account at [https://brave.com/search/api/](https://brave.com/search/api/) and select the Data for Search plan. Keys can be stored via `openclaw configure` or environment variables.

Perplexity requires credentials from either direct Perplexity accounts or OpenRouter, which supports crypto, prepaid, or credit card payment options.

## Technical Capabilities

Both tools cache results for 15 minutes by default. web_fetch supports Firecrawl as an optional fallback extractor and respects standard web restrictions like blocking private hostnames.
