# Grounding with Bing Search vs NewsCatcher

> NewsCatcher scores 67.5 (B) to Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B) for web search. NewsCatcher is cheaper for web search, $1 against $14 per 1,000 requests. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-newscatcher
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-newscatcher.md (~5,850 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

NewsCatcher scores 67.5 (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. Both do web search. NewsCatcher is cheaper for web search, $1 against $14 per 1,000 requests.

- Grounding with Bing Search: grade B, 63.7/100, rank #502 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bing-grounding.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bing-grounding.json
- NewsCatcher: grade B, 67.5/100, rank #321 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/newscatcher.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/newscatcher.json
- Best web search APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/search/index.md
- All 308 search comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/search/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Grounding with Bing Search (B)

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 45

Watch for: The Bing tools never return raw results to developers, only a model-written answer with citation links

### NewsCatcher (B)

Good for: Agents that need current news across languages, grouped into stories, or tables of events and company news on a schedule.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 94 against 68
- Agent ergonomics, 84 against 61
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 66

Also in its favour:
- Cheaper for web search, $1 against $14 per 1,000 requests

Watch for: The current News API and agent launched on 30 October 2026 and the MCP repository went public on 6 November 2026


## Why the edge

### Security & auth: Grounding with Bing Search +34

- 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.
- NewsCatcher (45): API keys in the `x-api-key` header, several per account, revocable in the platform, with advice to keep one per application. A 403 for 'a key that may not use this API' suggests per-key API access, but no scopes are documented (20). The MCP server documents `?apiKey=` on the server URL for Claude.ai custom connectors, with a warning, so less 10 (10 of 30). The MCP repository's SECURITY.md says URL keys are rejected unless the operator enables them, which the hosted server does per the docs. Toolsets let an operator load only the read-only `news` tools, write tools carry destructiveHint, and the server tells the assistant to confirm large or hourly agent jobs (14 of 20). Results are third-party article text and summaries, and no prompt-injection guidance was found in the docs or the MCP server's instructions (0 of 15). Every response carries a Correlation-ID, `GET /subscription` shows usage and balance, and runs are listed in the platform. No per-call audit log for the customer was found (7 of 15). The security page and footer claim SOC 2 Type II and link a trust centre on Oneleet, which wasn't read. A vulnerability disclosure policy covers the MCP server. No security.txt (404) and no bug bounty found (14 of 20). 10 + 14 + 0 + 7 + 14 = 45.

### Schema & documentation: NewsCatcher +26

- 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.
- NewsCatcher (94): OpenAPI 3.1 for the News API (version 1.3.9, 4 paths) and the agent (version 1.5.1, 33 paths), linked from llms.txt, and typed JSON Schema on every MCP tool through Pydantic (25). llms.txt, a Markdown copy of every page and a docs MCP server (10). MCP tool descriptions say when to use each and which tool to use instead, such as `list_articles` for older news; the REST reference explains each endpoint and the 'Choose an API' page compares them (17 of 20). Inputs are typed with enums for effort, mode and dimensions, length and range limits such as a 500-character query and limit 1 to 100, and required fields marked (13 of 15). Runnable examples in curl, Python and JavaScript, and an error table with retry advice for every status. The agent spec carries no response examples (14 of 15). Versioned APIs with a dated changelog, the latest entries on 4 November 2026, and separate changelogs for the v3 News API and CatchAll (15). 25 + 10 + 17 + 13 + 14 + 15 = 94.

### Agent ergonomics: NewsCatcher +23

- 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.
- NewsCatcher (84): 15 MCP tools in four toolsets, chosen per connection with `?tools=`, and tools return compact text rather than the full JSON. 15 for 11 to 30 tools plus 7 for toolsets (22 of 25). `limit`, `search_window`, effort, language, country, publisher, coverage and content-type filters, sorting, and paging on `/articles`; agent tables come back up to 200 rows at a time over MCP (20). Every status is documented with whether to retry; the agent returns stable `code` values, while the News API body has a `status_code` and a message meant for people (17 of 20). Every tool carries readOnlyHint and idempotentHint, writes carry destructiveHint, `start_research` has a free `dry_run`, and refused or failed calls aren't charged. No idempotency key for starting runs (17 of 20). Only `q` is required, with medium effort and a 7-day window as defaults. No official SDK for the current API was found; the docs show raw HTTP in three languages (8 of 15). 22 + 20 + 17 + 17 + 8 = 84.

### Transparency & trust: NewsCatcher +13

- 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.
- NewsCatcher (79): The API is closed under terms of 2 November 2026 naming NewsCatcher, Inc., and the MCP server is MIT, so between the two bands (20 of 30). The terms say inputs and generated data are not used to train models, a DPA applies automatically, and the privacy policy gives retention periods (server logs 7 days, API logs with query text 90 days, then archived indefinitely, billing records about seven years). They agree with each other, but indefinite archives of query logs hold it back (22 of 30). The terms promise 30 days' email notice before a paid product or API version is discontinued, with refunds of unused credits, and the v3 News API has a migration guide (15 of 20). A sub-processor list dated 2 November 2026 with each provider's location and the data it handles. The MCP repository deploys to Vercel and can send pseudonymised analytics to PostHog, and neither appears on the list (16 of 20). 20 + 22 + 15 + 16 = 73.

### Payments & pricing: NewsCatcher +10

- 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).
- NewsCatcher (30): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Credit prices per call published without login, and credits cost $1 per 1,000 through top-ups from $25 (20). 10,000 free credits every 30 days on a $0 plan, and the first top-up moves an account to pay as you go. No page says whether a card is needed to open the free plan, so half (10). A person signs up in the platform in a browser to get a key (0). NewsMCP's keyless tier belongs to a separate product and isn't counted. 0 + 20 + 10 + 0 = 30.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Grounding with Bing Search | NewsCatcher | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 67 | Grounding with Bing Search +1 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 94 | NewsCatcher +26 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 61 | 84 | NewsCatcher +23 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 79 | 45 | Grounding with Bing Search +34 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 30 | NewsCatcher +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 76 | Grounding with Bing Search +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 66 | 79 | NewsCatcher +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.7 · B** | **67.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Grounding with Bing Search | NewsCatcher |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft | NewsCatcher, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses` | `https://mcp.newscatcherapi.com/mcp` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| Price for web search | $14 per 1,000 requests | $1 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | no |
| 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 | 15 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |

## Verdicts

**Grounding with Bing Search.** First-party Bing grounding inside Foundry Agent Service, called with Entra ID so the agent never holds a search key, at a published $14 per 1,000 transactions. The tools return a model's answer with citations, never the raw results, and data sent to them falls outside Microsoft's Data Protection Addendum and Azure's compliance boundary.

**NewsCatcher.** One key and one credit balance cover a ranked news search, a background research agent and a hosted MCP server with toolsets and annotated tools, under OpenAPI 3.1 specs and a dated changelog. The current API launched on 30 October 2026, the MCP server accepts the key in its URL, and no SLA is published below Enterprise.

## Before you call either

### Grounding with Bing Search

1. Use the citations in the response annotations as the sources; the tool output itself is not returned, and the terms require showing the URLs and the Bing query link
2. Expect each run to bill one transaction per tool call at $14 per 1,000, plus model tokens, and set count and freshness in the tool configuration
3. Treat cited page text as untrusted input and don't put secrets or personal data in prompts, since queries leave the Azure compliance boundary
4. On 429 back off exponentially; no Retry-After header is documented for the tool

### NewsCatcher

1. Send the key in the `x-api-key` header, and use a separate key for the MCP server so it can be revoked alone
2. Call `start_research` with `dry_run` first, since agent runs cost 1,000 to 6,000 credits
3. Use `effort=low` for quick lookups; the default `medium` costs five times as much
4. Use `/articles` or `list_articles` for news older than 30 days or exact counts; `/search` covers 30 days only
5. On 429 or 503 wait for Retry-After, and quote the Correlation-ID header to support

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Grounding with Bing Search or NewsCatcher?

NewsCatcher scores 67.5 (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.

### Which is cheaper for web search, Grounding with Bing Search or NewsCatcher?

NewsCatcher, at $1 per 1,000 requests against $14 per 1,000 requests for Grounding with Bing Search. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

### Do Grounding with Bing Search and NewsCatcher need an API key?

Grounding with Bing Search uses an OAuth sign-in. NewsCatcher needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Grounding with Bing Search and NewsCatcher without installing anything?

Yes. Grounding with Bing Search has a hosted endpoint at https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses and NewsCatcher at https://mcp.newscatcherapi.com/mcp.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-newscatcher.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-newscatcher.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "bing-grounding", "b": "newscatcher"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare bing-grounding newscatcher`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bing-grounding.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/newscatcher.json

## Other comparisons with Grounding with Bing Search or NewsCatcher

- [Web Search Tool on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore vs Grounding with Bing Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-web-search-vs-bing-grounding.md)
- [Web Search Tool on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-web-search-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Arcmira vs Grounding with Bing Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arcmira-vs-bing-grounding.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Brave Search API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-brave-search-mcp.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Cloudflare Web Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-cloudflare-web-search.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs DeepSeek Search and Fetch API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-deepseek-search-api.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Exa API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-exa-mcp.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Firecrawl MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-firecrawl-mcp.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Kagi Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-kagi-search.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Linkup](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-linkup.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Mojeek Web Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-mojeek.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Parallel Search and Task APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-parallel-search-api.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Perplexity Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-perplexity-search-api.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SerpApi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serpapi.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serper.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SERPHouse](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serphouse.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-serpkite.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SpecStream](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-specstream.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-valyu.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Cloudflare Web Search API vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-web-search-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [DeepSeek Search and Fetch API vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-search-api-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Kagi Search API vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kagi-search-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Linkup vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/linkup-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Mojeek Web Search API vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mojeek-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs Parallel Search and Task APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-parallel-search-api.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs Perplexity Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-perplexity-search-api.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Arcmira vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arcmira-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Grep AI vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grep-ai-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs SpecStream](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-specstream.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs SerpApi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-serpapi.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-serper.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs SERPHouse](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-serphouse.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-serpkite.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-valyu.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Grep AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-grep-ai.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp