Baidu

Baidu runs a Chinese-language web search engine at baidu.com, and a much wider set of services around it. The search homepage links to news, hao123, maps, video, Tieba forums and a login, with a note at the bottom about reading the terms before use. Baidu's product directory adds an encyclopedia (Baike), a Q&A site (Zhidao), a document library (Wenku), a translator, an academic search, cloud storage (Netdisk), and a search API that it says is built for generative AI.

Behind these sit Baidu AI Cloud and the ERNIE model family, whose site lists ERNIE 5.5 Flash Base, 5.1 and 5.0. For website owners there is a search resource platform and an analytics product. The public pages for visitors and the corporate material are mostly in Chinese, which matters for anyone who needs to read the terms.

• Web search in Chinese. The main product is a search box on a Chinese-language page. Baidu's directory groups search services into web search, video, maps, news, images, image recognition, academic search and a job search called Baidu Baipin.
• Search resource platform. ziyuan.baidu.com is for site owners. Its menu lists resource submission, fast crawling, regular indexing, mobile adaptation, dead-link submission, index volume, crawl frequency, crawl diagnosis, robots tools and a section on AI traffic analysis.
• Baidu Tongji analytics. A web analytics product for sites, apps and mini programs. Its page lists event and funnel analysis, A/B testing, custom SQL queries and API export, and describes a SaaS deployment.
• Search API for generative AI. The product directory lists a Baidu search API that it describes as retrieval for generative AI. Details of limits and pricing were not on the pages we read.
• ERNIE models and AI Cloud. ERNIE is Baidu's large language model line, and its site announced ERNIE 5.5 Flash Base on 5 November 2026. Baidu AI Cloud offers the Qianfan platform for building agents, plus OCR, speech and face verification services.
• Advertising and marketing tools. The directory lists Baidu Marketing, Baidu Union (an ad network), Aifanfan and a commercial promotion product. The ad products are separate from the search page and are sold to businesses.
• Content and community sites. Baike, Zhidao, Tieba, Wenku and Jingyan are user-contributed sites that feed Baidu search results with questions, articles and documents.

• An e-commerce team targeting buyers in mainland China. The team can study how Chinese searchers phrase queries, check how its pages appear on Baidu, and register the site with the search resource platform to submit URLs, sitemaps and dead links.
• A market researcher comparing search ecosystems. The product directory lists an AI assistant (Wenxin Assistant), a super assistant (Baidu Dazi) and many services unlike those of Western engines. A researcher can use it to map which services sit behind a Chinese query, from encyclopedia to short video.
• A developer building a Chinese-language AI product. Baidu AI Cloud and the ERNIE site describe models, an agent platform and speech and OCR services. A developer can read the English ERNIE pages and the Chinese console documentation to compare options.

Searching needs no account: open baidu.com and type a query. A login is offered for personalised services. Site owners who want to be indexed sign in to the Baidu search resource platform, add and verify a site, and then use the submission tools for URLs, sitemaps and dead links.

The platform's pages are in Chinese, and Baidu does not publish an English quick start that we could read. Baidu Tongji offers a demo and a product manual in Chinese. Developers register on Baidu AI Cloud. Some AI offers show free call quotas, for example 500 free calls for face verification and 2,000 for general OCR, per the Baidu AI Cloud page.

Baidu's search site is in Chinese, and its homepage promotes the Wenxin Assistant and links to marketing services. Its privacy policy, also in Chinese, has a section on how personal information is transferred across borders.

It suits buyers who need to reach or study Chinese-speaking searchers and is a poor default for anyone who cannot read the site and its policy.

In our search engines ranking Baidu stands at #9 of 16: the products next to it are Yandex above and Yahoo Search below. Established names take the places after the first three, in ranked order, and we give no numeric score.

By headquarters, 1 of the 16 are established in Asia-Pacific, as Baidu is in China.

The Baidu home page lists maps, video, images, cloud storage, translation, encyclopedia and academic search beside the search box, so the first ninety days involve a whole product family in Chinese.

The contact page gives a Beijing campus address in both Chinese and English.

Exit is a default change, but understanding the privacy policy needs a translator, and this guide's reading of the Chinese text is our own.

In the catalogue: No user price shown on the pages read.

Using Baidu search costs nothing for a visitor, and the pages we read show no user price. Business products are priced separately. The Baidu AI Open Platform page shows entry prices in yuan, for example from 4 yuan per 1,000 calls for large-model speech synthesis and from 0.0038 yuan per call for handwriting recognition, and offers a free monthly quota of 2,000 pages for document parsing. Advertising on Baidu runs through its marketing products, whose rates were not published on the pages we read. Baidu Tongji does not list prices on its home page.

Basis: baidu.com, read for the Best Search Engines in 2026 guide (reviewed 7 November 2026).

Baidu is a Chinese company, and its privacy statement is published in Chinese. The table of contents shows sections on collecting personal information, cookies, sharing, storage and protection, user rights, minors, cross-border transfer of personal information and a privacy platform.

Where servers sit and which certifications apply are not stated on the pages we could read. The investor relations site blocked our request, so no corporate disclosures were checked. Anyone who needs a contract or data processing terms should ask Baidu directly and have the Chinese text reviewed.

Integrations the vendor names (11):

• Baidu Tongji
• Baidu Search Resource Platform
• Baidu Marketing
• Baidu Union
• Baidu AI Cloud
• Qianfan platform
• ERNIE models
• Baidu Netdisk
• Baidu Translate
• Baidu Baike
• Baidu Maps

4 products in this guide come closest to Baidu on tags, pricing and region.

• Ecosia (#6 of 16): Suits: Organisations and users who want ad-funded search with published financial reports.
• Yahoo Search (#10 of 16): Best for: Existing Yahoo account holders who want search beside their mail and finance pages. (United States)
• Marginalia Search (#14 of 16): A good match for: Readers who want to discover small personal and non-commercial sites.
• SearXNG (#15 of 16): Not for: organisations needing a contract, support desk or its own index. Metasearch engine that queries many services without tracking its users.

Read from the vendor’s own pages on 5 November 2026.

• baidu.com: Search homepage links in Chinese
• baidu.com/more: Product directory, search API, services list
• ziyuan.baidu.com: Webmaster platform menu: submission, index volume, crawl tools, robots
• tongji.baidu.com: Baidu Tongji analytics features
• ai.baidu.com: AI Open Platform prices in yuan, free quotas
• cloud.baidu.com: AI Cloud, Qianfan platform, ERNIE 5.1 mention
• ernie.baidu.com: ERNIE model list and release dates
• baidu.com/duty/yinsiquan.html: Privacy statement table of contents including cross-border transfer

The same four questions are asked of every search engines product: time to value, real cost, the way out and the intended buyer. The result for Baidu: #9, out of 16 ranked. How vendor facts are sourced, and how money can and cannot influence a page, is in the editorial process.