# FAQ > All you need to know about Staan Search API, its advantages, accuracy, speed, and policies. ## General Product overview, performance and policy. ### What is Staan Search API? Staan (Search Trusted API Access Network) is a real-time web search API developed by European Search Perspective, powering leading alternative search engines like Ecosia, Lilo, and Qwant. It provides developers and companies with direct access to a proprietary web index, designed specifically for enriching AI applications and agents, summarization, and embedded search. Based in Europe, Staan fully complies with all European regulations, including the GDPR, and aims to become a new player in sovereign European search technology. ### What are the main advantages of Staan API? Staan API offers a developer-friendly experience with instant integration, powerful performance, and an attractive pricing model. It's built with an "AI-first" approach, combining enriched web results, agent-ready design, and a configurable enrichment pipeline: domain filtering, content extraction, and reranking of the most relevant passages. This resource-efficient architecture ensures high-performance search at scale. ### How does Staan API guarantee accurate information? Staan combines three levels of enrichment: search results are first retrieved via its search pipeline, then Staan fetches the actual page content to extract targeted excerpts (extra snippets) — text chunks reranked by relevance to the query. For cases where full content is needed, Staan can also return the entire page in markdown or HTML (full content). It is this fetch → extraction → reranking pipeline that ensures the LLM receives the most relevant passages, rather than mere page descriptions, thereby reducing the risk of inaccurate or out-of-context information. ### How fast is Staan API? Staan API is optimized for real-time performance, delivering results in milliseconds. Its scalable architecture ensures consistent speed, even under high loads, making it ideal for AI agents and real-time applications. ### Where can I find the Staan API policy? You can view our API usage and privacy policy [here](https://staan.ai/privacy-policy). ## Web Search & Web Search for AI Index, regions, privacy, billing and limits. ### How many results are returned per call? Each call returns 10 documents. ### Is it possible to increase the number of results per call? Not at the moment: the number of results is fixed at 10 per call. Nevertheless, this improvement is on our roadmap. ### Can I cap my monthly usage to stay within a certain budget? This option is not currently available. ### How is my data privacy ensured? Your data is used solely to better understand usage patterns and improve the quality of our services. It is never shared with third parties for commercial purposes, nor used to train a language model (LLM). For cases where our fallback solution is involved, see Q8 to Q11. If you wish, you can also ask us to obfuscate all of your queries. ### Is Staan as privacy-friendly as Qwant? Staan is a B2B transactional service: privacy considerations differ from those of a consumer-facing search engine like Qwant. The goal here is not to protect the personal data of end users, but to ensure the security and confidentiality of data flowing through our pipeline — between your systems and our infrastructure. In practice, your data is neither exposed nor shared with third parties, nor used for any purpose beyond the service provided. Our entire infrastructure is hosted in Europe with OVHcloud, subject to European law — and therefore outside the reach of the US Cloud Act. If you wish, you can also request obfuscation of your queries. ### How is the index segmented by country within the same language? The country code determines the region being analysed. For example, with the code de-DE, Staan analyses documents related to the German region and returns results in German. For Austrian usage, some specifically Austrian documents may therefore not be prioritised. ### Can I choose the number of extra-snippets returned? Yes. By default, we return 3 extra-snippets; this number is configurable (from 1 to 10). ### What is the fallback solution? It is an American backup mechanism that steps in to supplement certain results only when necessary. This coverage evolves empirically, in line with the growth of our own index. ### Is my data privacy guaranteed even when the fallback solution is used? Yes. Queries transmitted to the fallback solution are not retained by it. ### Is my data stored in the United States or reused by the fallback solution? No. ### Can I fully disable the fallback solution? Yes. Simply contact us and we will adjust your configuration accordingly. Please note, however, that the quality of some results may be diminished as a result. ### Can I integrate Staan into a broader solution marketed under my own brand (white label / sub-licensing)? Yes. From the console, you can create as many API keys as needed. ### When will the console support credit card payments? Credit card payment is on our roadmap. ### Are languages other than French, German and English planned? For now, we are focusing our efforts on these three languages to deliver the best possible relevance. Other languages will follow, but we are not in a position to share a timeline at this stage. ### Will a query written in English on the French index be understood? Yes, it can be understood. We nonetheless recommend pairing the country code appropriate to your needs to get the best results. ### Is Staan SecNumCloud-qualified? What compliance and certification guarantees do you offer? Staan is not SecNumCloud-qualified and holds no certification at this time. ### Does the English-language index cover all English-speaking countries or only the UK? The English-language index covers several markets. The available EN country codes are: en-US, en-GB, en-FR, en-CA, en-AU, en-IN, en-IE, en-NZ, en-ZA and en-SG. ### Can I restrict my results to certain domains or exclude them (whitelist / blacklist)? Yes. You can currently restrict your results to one domain. The ability to add multiple domains will be available in Q3. ### Do you offer an SLA? What guarantees of API uptime do you provide? We do not offer an SLA at this stage. ### Do you have Terms of Service and a DPA? Yes. The Terms of Service are provided upon registration. The DPA (Data Processing Agreement) is available upon request. ## Answer The generative Answer service and its options. ### Can I adjust the length of the generated response? Yes. You can choose between a short (default) or long response. ### Can I get a response based solely on my own content? Yes. You can obtain a response that relies exclusively on content from your domain, using the filter parameter. ### What customisation options does the Answer service offer? Several options are available: response length, streamed or non-streamed mode, output format (markdown or plain text), inclusion of related queries, and passing a context for conversational mode. Also worth noting: the Answer service can take a list of URLs of your choice (rather than a query) as input and provide a summary. ### What do I need to implement on my end to use Answer? Answer is a back-end service only: the user interface remains your responsibility. To facilitate integration, we provide a TypeScript SDK: [github.com/Qwant/answer-node](https://github.com/Qwant/answer-node) ### Which language model (LLM) is used? The service relies on Mistral Small. ### Are my queries used to train the models? No. ### How can I make sure all my documents are properly indexed in Staan? You can contact us to obtain this information. In general, our coverage grows every day: there is a good chance your documents are already indexed. ### Is there an instant translation feature for content published in multiple languages and across multiple territories? The Answer service is currently available in French only. Deployment in other languages is planned in the near future.