# Grounding with Bing Search vs Valyu

> Valyu scores 69.3 (B) to Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B) for web search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-valyu
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-valyu.md (~5,750 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

Valyu scores 69.3 (B) on agent readiness against Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Grounding with Bing Search leads on security & auth. Both do web search.

- 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
- Valyu: grade B, 69.3/100, rank #254 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/valyu.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/valyu.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 44

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

### Valyu (B)

Good for: Research agents that need SEC filings, papers, patents, clinical trials or market data alongside the web, with a per-query price cap.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 90 against 68
- Agent ergonomics, 83 against 61
- Payments & pricing, 45 against 20
- Transparency & trust, 78 against 66

Watch for: Per-plan rate limits are stated only in example responses, not in a table


## Why the edge

### Security & auth: Grounding with Bing Search +35

- 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.
- Valyu (44): The CLI mints API keys with a hard spending cap and can rotate and revoke them, management keys carry explicit scopes, organisations have MFA, and the hosted MCP has OAuth sign-in (28). The MCP docs lead with `?valyuApiKey=` in the URL (minus 10). Spend-capped keys and `max_price` limit cost exposure, but `valyu_deepresearch_control` deletes tasks with no confirmation we could find (12). Search and Contents return full page text from the open web, and we found no prompt-injection guidance in the docs index (0). No per-call log or audit trail found for the operator (0). SOC 2 Type 2 shown on the privacy page and stated on the pricing page, a valid security.txt (security@valyu.ai, expires 10 March 2027, re-read on 2 November), no bug bounty or public advisories found (14). The MCP docs still give `?valyuApiKey=` for every client on 2 November. 28-10+12+0+0+14 = 44.

### Payments & pricing: Valyu +25

- 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).
- Valyu (45): No x402, MPP or L402 in llms.txt, the pricing page or the OpenAPI file on 2 November, so there was no payment route to check live (0). Since October usage is billed in credits, 1,600 for a $10 top-up, with per-result Search prices by source (web and news 0.1 credits, arXiv and PubMed 0.05, SEC filings 1.92), Contents at 0.2 a URL and fixed DeepResearch prices by mode, all public (20). $10 of free credit ($20 with a company email), no card, valid 12 months (20). A person has to create the account, but after that an agent can log in through the CLI, headless if needed, and mint its own spend-capped keys. That's a programmatic key route after a human signup, so we gave part of the line (5). 0+20+20+5 = 45.

### Schema & documentation: Valyu +22

- 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.
- Valyu (90): Valid OpenAPI 3.0.3 (info version 2.3.0) with 24 paths and 29 operations across Search, Contents, Answer, DeepResearch, Batches, Workflows and Datasources on 2 November, matching the endpoint pages in llms.txt (25). llms.txt with a 'Guidance for agents' section (10). The MCP tools carry one-line purposes such as 'Read one or more URLs as clean markdown', and the docs explain source presets, but say little about when not to use a tool (13). `search_type` is an enum, `max_num_results` runs 1 to 20, `relevance_threshold` 0 to 1, `source_biases` -5 to 5 and `instructions` caps at 500 characters, with only `query` required (14). 200, 206 partial success and 400 to 503 documented, with examples across the docs (13). Versioned paths (/v1) and two dated changelogs, the platform changelog to 31 October 2026 and the SDK and API changelog to 26 October (15). 25+10+13+14+13+15 = 90.

### Agent ergonomics: Valyu +22

- 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.
- Valyu (83): `max_num_results`, `response_length`, `fast_mode` and `max_price` size each response, and the MCP has six tools after folding eleven into one `valyu_search`. We couldn't read the hosted tool definitions, since the server isn't open source (22). Source include and exclude lists, per-source biases, dates, country and a relevance threshold. No pagination found (18). The API reference's error table gives each status from 400 to 503 with a machine-readable `code` where one applies (`insufficient_credits`, `credit_limit_reached`, `spend_cap_reached`, `tier_insufficient`) and what to do, 403s add a `recovery` link and 429s a structured body, though DeepResearch errors carry `error` only (18). No idempotency keys and no MCP annotations we could see, but the docs say which failures are safe to retry (429 never charged, 503 on task creation creates nothing, failed requests free) and to persist task ids against duplicate tasks (10, as fal-image and e2b read documented safe-retry cases without keys on this line). Only `query` is required, with Python and TypeScript SDKs plus a Rust SDK in alpha (15). 22+18+18+10+15 = 83.

### Transparency & trust: Valyu +12

- 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.
- Valyu (78): Closed service with terms that name Valyu.Network Ltd, company 14436543 in England and Wales, per the 30 September check (15). The privacy policy (20 October 2025) says queries are deleted within 24 to 72 hours, security logs kept 90 days, performance logs 30 days and billing records 7 years, and that query data isn't used to train models. No DPA referenced (26). Dated notice for the legacy MCP tools, hidden now and removed on 1 December 2026, but no general deprecation policy (12). Processing in the UK, EU and US is disclosed. Subprocessors are named by category only (12). The privacy policy is unchanged on 2 November (last updated 20 October 2025), and the pricing page now lists zero data retention on request for Enterprise. 15+26+12+12 = 65.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Grounding with Bing Search | Valyu | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 70 | Valyu +2 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 90 | Valyu +22 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 61 | 83 | Valyu +22 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 79 | 44 | Grounding with Bing Search +35 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 45 | Valyu +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 80 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 66 | 78 | Valyu +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.7 · B** | **69.3 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Grounding with Bing Search | Valyu |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft | Valyu |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responses` | `https://api.valyu.ai/v1/search` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for web search | $14 per 1,000 requests | $0.625 per 1,000 pages |
| 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 | 6 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-11-01 | 2025-10-20 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2025-10-20 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| 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 | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 19 stars, 6.7k npm/wk, 7.1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 4.5/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Grounding with Bing Search

No score change since it was listed.

### Valyu

- +4.7 on 2 November 2026: product, new evidence
- no change on 8 October 2026: checklist

## 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.

**Valyu.** Web plus academic, financial, patent and life-science sources behind one search call, billed per result with a per-query price cap. Since 21 October rate limits scale with the plan and 429s carry Retry-After, but the per-plan numbers appear only in examples. The MCP docs still put the API key in the URL.

## 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

### Valyu

1. Set `max_price` and `max_num_results` on every search to bound cost
2. Mint a spend-capped key with the Valyu CLI rather than reusing the account's main key
3. On a 429, wait the `retry_after` seconds and retry; it's never charged. The SDKs retry twice by default
4. Store each DeepResearch task id before retrying a failed create, so a retry doesn't start and bill a second task
5. Call `valyu_search`. The legacy per-vertical MCP tools stop working on 2026-12-01
6. A 206 means some sources failed. Check which before treating results as complete

## Questions

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

Valyu scores 69.3 (B) on agent readiness against Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Grounding with Bing Search leads on security & auth.

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

Grounding with Bing Search uses an OAuth sign-in. Valyu takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Grounding with Bing Search and Valyu 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 Valyu at https://api.valyu.ai/v1/search.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Grounding with Bing Search or Valyu

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