Microsoft will retire the Bing Webmaster Tools SOAP and POX/HTTP APIs on 31 August 2026. Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz reported the reminder on 3 August 2026, pointing to a post by Microsoft's Krishna Madhavan and to the retirement notice now sitting on the API documentation itself.
After that date, requests sent to the legacy endpoints will no longer be served. The replacement is the JSON/HTTP (REST) API, and Microsoft's position is that every method already exists there with identical functionality. That makes this a smaller job than most deprecations, which is exactly why it is easy to leave until the endpoints go quiet.
Krishna Madhavan posted the reminder on LinkedIn and X
Madhavan, who works at Microsoft, put the whole thing in one paragraph: "ANNOUNCEMENT!! Using the Bing Webmaster Tools SOAP/POX APIs? These legacy APIs will be retired on August 31, 2026. Please review the migration guidance and plan your move to our REST/JSON APIs." Schwartz covered that post on 3 August 2026 at Search Engine Roundtable, and his framing was blunt: if you use these legacy APIs, you should begin migrating to the JSON/HTTP version.
The API documentation carries the same 31 August 2026 date
The notice Microsoft placed on the Bing Webmaster Tools API documentation reads: "Notice: The SOAP and POX/HTTP APIs will be retired on August 31, 2026. After this date, requests to these endpoints will no longer be served. Migrate to the JSON/HTTP (REST) API before August 31, 2026 to avoid service interruption."
Two documents, one date, no hedging in either. Neither the LinkedIn and X post nor the documentation notice mentions an extension or a grace period, and Schwartz's report does not raise one either.
What Microsoft says is not changing
Microsoft published a short list of things that carry over untouched, and it is the reason this migration is a plumbing task rather than a re-authorisation project. In Microsoft's own wording:
- "All API methods remain fully available over JSON/HTTP with identical functionality."
- "Your API key remains the same - no re-issuance required."
- "Quotas, rate limits, and permissions are unchanged."
- "JSON/HTTP endpoints continue to be supported and actively developed."
What Microsoft does not spell out, at least not in what Schwartz reported on 3 August 2026, is the detail of how request and response payloads differ between the old and new interfaces. That is the part a developer has to open the migration guidance for.
What goes away on 31 August 2026 and what carries over
The table below splits the announcement into the half that breaks and the half that does not, using Microsoft's own statements as reported by Search Engine Roundtable on 3 August 2026.
| Item | Status from 31 August 2026, per Microsoft |
|---|---|
| SOAP and POX/HTTP endpoints | Retired. Requests to these endpoints will no longer be served |
| JSON/HTTP (REST) endpoints | Continue to be supported and actively developed |
| API methods | All remain fully available over JSON/HTTP with identical functionality |
| Your API key | Remains the same, no re-issuance required |
| Quotas, rate limits and permissions | Unchanged |
What this means for Thai marketers
The source says nothing about Thailand, so the following is a practical read rather than anything Microsoft or Search Engine Roundtable stated. The exposure here is not in the Bing Webmaster Tools interface, which is unaffected, but in whatever scripts a team wrote and then forgot about. Automated URL submission after a publish, nightly index-status pulls, crawl-error exports feeding a dashboard, keyword data dropped into a reporting sheet: any of that written more than a couple of years ago has a fair chance of pointing at a SOAP or POX endpoint.
The failure mode is quiet. A submission script that stops getting a response does not usually raise its hand. It just stops submitting, and three months later someone notices indexing on Bing has drifted while nobody was watching. Since the key and the quotas carry over, checking is a fifteen-minute job: grep the codebase for the old endpoint host, confirm which calls are still live, and read the migration guidance for the payload format. Doing that before the deadline costs less than diagnosing it afterwards, and it fits naturally into the same pass as a routine technical SEO audit.
One more note for Thai teams running reporting stacks: if Bing data flows into a warehouse or a Looker Studio dashboard alongside GA4, the break will surface as a flat line in a chart rather than as an error in a log. Whoever owns the analytics and measurement setup should know which feeds depend on these endpoints before 31 August 2026, not after.
Questions about the Bing Webmaster Tools API retirement
When exactly do the old Bing APIs stop working?
31 August 2026. Microsoft's documentation notice states that after that date, requests to the SOAP and POX/HTTP endpoints will no longer be served, and Krishna Madhavan's post on LinkedIn and X gives the same date.
Do I need a new API key after migrating?
No. Microsoft states plainly that your API key remains the same and no re-issuance is required, and that quotas, rate limits and permissions are unchanged as well.
Will I lose any functionality by moving to the REST API?
Microsoft says no. Its wording is that all API methods remain fully available over JSON/HTTP with identical functionality. What the source does not detail is how the request and response payload formats differ, so the migration guidance is still worth reading before rewriting anything.
Is there a grace period after 31 August 2026?
The source does not state one. Neither Microsoft's notice nor the Search Engine Roundtable report published on 3 August 2026 mentions an extension, a grace period or a phased shutdown. Plan for the endpoints to stop on the date given.
Does this affect Thailand differently from anywhere else?
The source says nothing about Thailand or about any regional difference. It is a global API retirement with one date, and nothing in the reporting suggests a market-by-market schedule. The only local variable is how many Thai teams still have legacy calls running.
The short version
A dated deadline under four weeks out, no key rotation, no permission changes, no lost methods. The work is a URL swap plus a payload-format check, and the risk of skipping it is a silent failure rather than a loud one. If your team maintains automated Bing submissions or index-status monitoring as part of a broader SEO programme, put a calendar block on it this month rather than the last week of August.
