# Grounding with Bing Search vs Linkup (slim)

> Linkup scores 68 (B) to Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B) for web search. Linkup is cheaper for web search, $5 against $14 per 1,000 requests. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-linkup.md (~5,950 tokens) · this version ~3,380 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-linkup.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-linkup
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Linkup scores 68 (B) on agent readiness against Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Grounding with Bing Search leads on security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do web search. Linkup is cheaper for web search, $5 against $14 per 1,000 requests. Linkup accepts x402. Grounding with Bing Search doesn't.

- Grounding with Bing Search: B 63.7, rank #502 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bing-grounding.min.md
- Linkup: B 68, rank #297 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/linkup.min.md
- Grounding with Bing Search, good for Teams already building on Foundry Agent Service who want cited answers from Bing without handling a search key. Ahead on Security & auth, 79 against 32; Maintenance & community, 80 against 73; Transparency & trust, 66 against 61.
- Linkup, good for Agents that want a cited answer or schema-shaped output from one search call at a fixed price, and for European buyers who want a French vendor with zero retention on request. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 88 against 68; Agent ergonomics, 76 against 61; Payments & pricing, 80 against 20. Also Cheaper for web search, $5 against $14 per 1,000 requests; An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account; Runs on your own machine.

| Category | Grounding with Bing Search | Linkup |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 68 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 68 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 61 | 76 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 79 | 32 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 80 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 80 | 73 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 66 | 61 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Grounding with Bing Search | Linkup |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Microsoft | Linkup |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses` | `https://api.linkup.so/v1/search` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for web search | $14 per 1,000 requests | $5 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | yes, from $0.01/call |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the customer's Microsoft agreement and the separate Grounding with Bing terms of use, which exclude it from the Microsoft Data Protection Addendum | none |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 4 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `so.linkup.mcp/linkup-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-11-01 | 2025-08-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2025-04-01 |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 29 stars, 54k npm/wk, 84k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Linkup +60: Grounding with Bing Search 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). $14 per 1,000 transactions for Grounding with Bing Search and Custom Search, published on microsoft.com without a login (20). No free tier for Grounding with Bing, and an Azure subscription needs a card, as on the Azure Translator listing (0). A person signs up for Azure, creates a Foundry project and, for bing_grounding, a Bing resource (0).); Linkup 80 (x402 on Linkup's own /v1/search and /v1/fetch at a flat $0.01 in USDC on Base, not on research or extract, so partial (30). Per-call prices published without login (20). $20 of credit topped up monthly for work-email signups. The docs don't say whether a card is needed, so half credit (10). An agent can pay by x402 with no account (20).)
- Security & auth, Grounding with Bing Search +47: Grounding with Bing Search 79 (Callers authenticate to the Foundry project with Microsoft Entra ID tokens and RBAC roles (Foundry User to run agents, Foundry Project Manager to add connections), with just-in-time Contributor through Entra PIM for provisioning. The Bing resource key sits in a project connection and the agent never holds it. No key in a URL (28 of 30). The tools only read. Custom Search confines grounding to configured public domains, and an admin can turn web search off for a whole subscription. There is no per-agent read-only toggle to set, since the tools have no write path (15 of 20). The web search page tells developers to treat web search results as untrusted input and to keep secrets and personal data out of prompts, and the tool best practices page says the same of all tool outputs. Raw results are not passed back to the caller (10 of 15). Run steps show each tool call and the Bing query sent, and Azure's activity log covers resource changes. No per-query audit log for Bing was found (10 of 15). Microsoft runs a coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy and bounty programmes through MSRC. microsoft.com's security.txt passed its Expires date on 23 September 2026 and still carries it on 6 November, and the Azure compliance attestations are not shown to cover a service whose data leaves the compliance boundary (16 of 20). 28 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 16 = 79.); Linkup 32 (One Bearer key per organisation. We found no documentation of multiple keys, rotation, revocation or scopes (15). The MCP README documents `?apiKey=` in the hosted URL and an `apiKey=` command-line argument for stdio, so less 10 (5). Every action is a read, but the MCP server has no tool subsets (15). Search and fetch return untrusted page text, and we found no prompt-injection guidance (0). No per-call audit log found (0). SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA and annual pen tests are claimed on the security page. No security.txt, no bug bounty, and contact@linkup.so is the only security contact (12).)
- Schema & documentation, Linkup +20: Grounding with Bing Search 68 (The tools are typed in the official SDKs (BingGroundingTool, BingCustomSearchPreviewTool, WebSearchTool) in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java, and the toolbox exposes web search as an MCP tool. No public OpenAPI description of the Responses tool types was confirmed from the pages read (10 of 25). Microsoft Learn serves each page as Markdown with `accept=text/markdown`, though learn.microsoft.com/llms.txt answers 404 (10). The pages say what each of four web grounding routes is for and when to choose it, when to use Custom Search instead, and not to ask the model to summarise a whole page (17 of 20). Parameters are typed with defaults and limits in prose, `count` 1 to 50 with default 5, freshness values and a date-range form, market and language formats, `search_context_size` low, medium or high (11 of 15). Examples in Python, C#, TypeScript, Java and REST with expected output, and troubleshooting tables for connection ID, authentication and 429 problems, but no error codes or bodies for the tools (10 of 15). Requests carry `api-version=v1` on the toolbox, SDK changelogs are dated and a monthly What's New page lists new articles, the latest for August 2026 (10 of 15). 10 + 10 + 17 + 11 + 10 + 10 = 68.); Linkup 88 (OpenAPI at api.linkup.so/v1/openapi.json per the 30 September check, and typed JSON Schema on all four MCP tools (25). llms.txt and Markdown pages (10). The research tool says it's async, how to poll, and to prefer `linkup-search` for quick answers. The search tool lists what to use it for but not when not to (17). Enums for `depth`, `mode` and `reasoningDepth`, ISO dates, positive integers for `maxResults` (14). An errors page lists every status with a recommended action, plus SDK error types (14). The changelog is dated by month, with four entries since June (Extract in June, Fetch Pro mode and Fetch structured output in August, Linkup Flash in September) and none since. Versioning is the /v1 path only (8).)
- Agent ergonomics, Linkup +15: Grounding with Bing Search 61 (Read as a server-side search tool inside an agent run. The tools return a model's answer with citations rather than raw results, and `search_context_size` sets how much context web search uses. A caller can't size or inspect the result set itself, since the Bing tools never return their output. Custom Search confines grounding to chosen domains without code (18 of 25). `count`, freshness, market and language filters, and domain restriction through Custom Search. No pagination or offset (13 of 20). Troubleshooting tables give causes and fixes for connection ID, RBAC and 429 problems, but the tools document no error codes (8 of 20). Searches only read, so a retry is safe apart from the per-transaction charge. No MCP annotations are documented for the toolbox's web search tool (10 of 20). The web_search route needs only a project, a model deployment and the Foundry User role. bing_grounding also needs a paid Bing resource and a project connection. SDKs in Python, C#, JavaScript and Java (12 of 15). Prompt caching gets no hits with the Bing tools, because they add a timestamp to every request. 18 + 13 + 8 + 10 + 12 = 61.); Linkup 76 (Four tools, search, fetch, research and research polling, compact. Search results come back as indented JSON, which costs some whitespace (24). `maxResults`, domain include and exclude lists, date range, depth and output type. No result pagination (18). Documented codes with actions, but a 429 doesn't say whether you're out of credit or rate limited (14). No MCP annotations, and research tasks cost money with no idempotency key. Searches are safe to repeat (5). Only `query` is required and `depth` defaults to fast. Python and JavaScript SDKs (15).)
- Maintenance & community, Grounding with Bing Search +7: Grounding with Bing Search 80 (Read as a closed service with official SDKs, as the other Azure listings are. The web search page was updated on 2 November 2026 and the Bing tools page on 12 October, and azure-ai-projects 2.10.0 shipped on PyPI and npm on 30 October 2026, the SDK that carries the tool types (30). azure-ai-projects released 2.6.0 (4 September), 2.6.1, 2.7.0, 2.8.0 (5 October), 2.9.0 (17 October) and 2.10.0 in the 90 days from 8 August. Their changelogs weren't read for web search changes, so they count as SDK releases (20). Microsoft Learn feedback, Microsoft Q&A and the Azure SDK issue trackers, whose reply times weren't sampled (10 of 15). Current official SDKs in Python, JavaScript, .NET and Java, the .NET one in preview (15). The SDKs live in the azure-sdk monorepos and CI wasn't checked (5 of 10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 15 + 5 = 80.); Linkup 73 (The newest release that changes code is 30 September 2026, Python linkup-sdk 0.23.1 (request deadline errors) and JavaScript linkup-sdk 3.7.1, 32 days before this check (20). Python 0.24.0 of 22 October drops Python 3.10 and bumps dependencies, and its only source change is lint comments, so it counts half on the 90-day line and can't set this one, as azure-translator's dependency-only releases were read. Python 0.19.1 to 0.23.1, JavaScript 3.4.0 to 3.7.1 and MCP server 3.4.0 fall in the 90 days to 1 November (20). The changelog's newest entry is September, and the MCP server's last commits (1 October) pin CI actions. We didn't read the GitHub issues (10). Registered as so.linkup.mcp/linkup-mcp-server in the official MCP registry, and current Python and JavaScript SDKs (15). The MCP server's CI lints and builds but runs no tests. Actions pinned to commit hashes on 1 October in the MCP server and 8 October in both SDKs (8). 20+20+10+15+8 = 73.)
- Transparency & trust, Grounding with Bing Search +5: Grounding with Bing Search 66 (Closed service. The terms of use, updated November 2025, are separate from the Online Services terms and sit under the customer's Microsoft agreement (15 of 30). The docs and the terms agree that the Data Protection Addendum and the Product Terms' privacy and security terms don't apply, that Microsoft and the customer are independent controllers, and that the query and parameters leave the Azure compliance and geographic boundary. The terms defer storage and use of query data to the general Microsoft Privacy Statement and state no retention period (15 of 30). The Bing Search APIs retirement was announced on 16 May 2025 for 11 August 2025, under three months' notice, and the web search page marks the Deep Research tool deprecated with a replacement. Microsoft's lifecycle policy covers Azure services, but no deprecation terms for Grounding with Bing were found (10 of 20). Data location for Bing processing isn't stated, and no sub-processor list for it was found (5 of 20). 15 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 45.); Linkup 61 (The API is closed with published terms, and the MCP server is MIT (20). Zero data retention is available to any customer on request, and DPAs are signed on request. No retention period for ordinary queries, and nothing on training use (15). No deprecation policy or dated notices found (0). Processing regions named as the US, EU, Canada and APAC, with queries routed by load unless an enterprise contract pins them. No subprocessor list (10).)