Metaso 秘塔AI搜索
Chinese AI search engine with academic depth and pay-per-query API
Overview
Metaso (秘塔AI搜索) is an ad-free AI search engine from Shanghai that returns structured answers with timelines, outlines and cited sources across the web, academic papers, images and video, plus a pay-per-query API for developers.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 12 Jul 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
What you can produce with Metaso 秘塔AI搜索
- Structured answers with auto-generated outlines and mind maps
- Source citation and cross-reference tracing
- Academic search across Chinese + English databases, incl. PubMed
- Image, video and podcast search
- Deep Thinking mode powered by DeepSeek-R1
- Agentic Search: 20+ built-in agents chaining 5-15 tool calls
- Pay-per-query search API with official Python SDK
- Ad-free interface
ASEAN Perspective
Metaso 秘塔AI搜索 in Southeast Asia
ASEAN-region availability and pricing notes coming soon. Drop the editorial team a note via /contact/ if you can supply local context (Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam).
Metaso is one of the more usable AI search products to come out of China: genuinely ad-free, strong academic-database coverage (it pulls from both Chinese and English scholarly sources, including PubMed), and a deep-research mode that assembles a cited, report-style answer instead of a single paragraph. For anyone doing bilingual research, it's a real alternative to Perplexity.
The catch is that it's built Chinese-first: the interface, defaults and mobile app onboarding (QR-code sign-in) assume a Chinese user, and there's no regional Southeast Asia pricing or localization. It's freely accessible outside China and the web search itself costs nothing to use. Developers get a genuinely cheap way in: the search API runs about 0.03 yuan (roughly half a US cent) per query with a 5,000-point free allowance, and there's an official Python SDK. Worth trying if you read Chinese and want a cleaner alternative to ad-heavy incumbents; less compelling if you don't.
What people say
Metaso's Chinese-language user base, reflected in discussion threads on Zhihu, the country's Quora-equivalent, leans positive on the specific use case it's built around: academic and research writing. Users highlight that it can build its own knowledge base from search results, auto-generate outlines and mind maps, and trace citations back to source documents, which is exactly what a student writing a thesis needs and a general search engine doesn't do.
The complaint that recurs most is about answer construction: Metaso's responses blend and compress multiple source types into one answer in a way some users describe as working against what they actually asked for, and several threads note factual slips, correctly locating a platform or source but then attributing content to it that was never actually there. That's a real caveat for anyone using it past the overview stage and into citation-dependent work.
On the technical side, Metaso runs on its own MetaLLM as the base model but also plugs in DeepSeek-R1 for its Deep Thinking mode, giving users a choice between fast lightweight answers and slower, more reasoned ones. In 2026 it added Agentic Search, a mode with more than 20 built-in agents that can chain 5 to 15 tool calls autonomously to both search and complete a task in one pass, pushing the product from pure search toward an agent-assisted research workflow.
Coverage-wise, it's genuinely broad: general web, Chinese and English academic databases including PubMed, plus images, video and podcasts, all searchable through the same structured-answer interface with no ads anywhere in the flow, a point Chinese reviewers repeatedly single out as a relief compared to ad-saturated incumbent search engines.
For developers, the API is priced to encourage experimentation rather than lock you in: search queries run about 0.03 yuan (roughly $0.004) each, question-answering calls cost more at 18 points per query, and new accounts start with a 5,000-point free allowance. There's an official Python SDK on GitHub for integration. The product is Chinese-first in interface and mobile onboarding, so English-only users get a usable but not fully localized experience.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Metaso 秘塔AI搜索's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Metaso 秘塔AI搜索 unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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