Using Azure OpenAI Models with Internet Search or URL Retrieval Capabilities (Data Zone - Standard, France Central)

Question

Hello,

I am currently using the Azure OpenAI Chat Completions API with a Data Zone – Standard deployment in France Central, and my current workload involves normal text-to-text chat (similar to ChatGPT behavior). The model is functioning as expected for conversational use.

Now, I would like to extend my use case to include real-time information retrieval, such as:

• Searching the web.
• Extracting or summarizing content from public URLs.
• Responding with knowledge that is not in the model's pre-trained dataset.

I am aware that OpenAI’s GPT-4o (or GPT-4o-mini) on openai.com supports browsing the web in certain contexts.

Could you please clarify the following:

Are there any models available in Azure OpenAI (Standard or other tiers) that support real-time internet search or accessing external URLs (like browsing, summarizing public pages, etc.)?

Is there any additional configuration needed to enable this feature?

If not:

Are there any roadmap details or alternatives available in Azure to replicate this behavior (e.g., combining Azure OpenAI with Cognitive Search, Bing Search API, or other services)?

Finally, does the France Central region support these capabilities if available?Thank you in advance for your help — this information is key for me to plan the next stage of my app’s development.

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A,

As of June 2025, Azure OpenAI Service does not natively support real-time internet browsing or direct access to external URLs for models like GPT-4.1 or GPT-4o, including in the France Central region. This means that, unlike OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has browsing capabilities, Azure-hosted models cannot fetch or summarize live web content out of the box.

While Azure OpenAI models lack built-in browsing, you can replicate similar functionalities by integrating them with other Azure services:

1. Bing Search API Integration
2. Azure AI Foundry Agent Service with Grounding with Bing search functionality

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/agents/how-to/tools/bing-grounding#how-grounding-with-bing-search-works

Supported models in AI foundry Agent - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/agents/concepts/model-region-support

( Grounding with Bing Search works with all Azure OpenAI models that Azure AI Foundry Agent Service supports, except gpt-4o-mini, 2024-07-18)

Please Upvote and accept the answer if it helps!!