Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Grounding with Bing Search vs You.com APIs

You.com APIs scores 76.1 (BB) on agent readiness against Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Grounding with Bing Search leads on security & auth. Both do web search. You.com APIs is cheaper for web search, $5 against $14 per 1,000 requests.

Best web search APIs for AI agents · All 308 search comparisons

Which one, for what

Grounding with Bing Search B

Best 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 59

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where You.com APIs loses 3 points for them

Watch for

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

You.com APIs BB

Best for An unattended agent that needs search, page text and cited answers and wants to pay per call without an account.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 80 against 68
  • Schema & documentation, 92 against 68
  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 61
  • Payments & pricing, 88 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 85 against 80

Also in its favour

  • Cheaper for web search, $5 against $14 per 1,000 requests
  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Two API hosts. Answer and Research return 'Missing Authentication Token' on ydc-index.io

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Payments & pricing You.com APIs +68

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).

You.com APIs 88

x402 (USDC on Base or Solana) and MPP (USDC on Tempo) on GET /v1/search, /v1/agents/search and POST /v1/finance_research. On 1 November an unpaid GET https://api.you.com/v1/search returned 402 with an x402 v2 PAYMENT-REQUIRED challenge for 5,000 base units of USDC on Base and on Solana and an MPP WWW-Authenticate: Payment challenge on Tempo, and an unpaid POST /v1/finance_research returned the same pair, with x402 at 110,000 base units. Contents, Answer and Research still need a key (28). Per-call and per-page prices published without a login (20). The pricing FAQ now says $10 of API credit on sign-up and $90 more on verifying the account, no card, with sign-up credits valid 60 days. The Web Search card on the same page says '$10 free credit' (20). The MCP free profile needs no key (100 queries a day), and x402 or MPP needs no account (20).

Schema & documentation You.com APIs +24

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.

You.com APIs 92

Public OpenAPI, one specification per API from the index at you.com/docs/openapi.json (25). llms.txt with Markdown twins of every page (10). A 'Choose the right API' page and MCP docs say which endpoint fits which job, and the MCP docs say there is no you-answer tool (15). Typed parameters in the OpenAPI, and the MCP rejects conflicting domain filters, such as include_domains with exclude_domains (12). The error reference covers 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 422, 429 and 500 with guidance per code, body examples and the host-split pitfall (15). Versioned paths (/v1) and a dated public API changelog at you.com/docs/changelog, linked from llms.txt, with entries from 15 July to 26 October 2026 (15).

Agent ergonomics You.com APIs +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.

You.com APIs 83

Six MCP tools per the docs, which state there is no you-answer tool, with ?tools= or X-Allowed-Tools to load a subset, a default allow-list of four, and a free profile that exposes two. Web Search returns up to 100 results with extraction opt-in (25). Result count, domain include, exclude and boost lists, safesearch, and since 9 October a total_max_tokens budget of 1,024 to 8,192 on highlights, which the changelog says brings a 10-result response under 1,000 tokens (20). Each error code says what to do next, and 402 says whether to add credits or pay the challenge (20). Search is read-only and a 402 can be retried once paid. We couldn't see MCP annotations, since the hosted server's source isn't public (8). Few required parameters, but Web Search and Contents live on ydc-index.io while Answer and Research run only on api.you.com, and the only current SDK is Python. The TypeScript @youdotcom-oss/sdk has been deprecated on npm since 3 March 2026 in favour of the MCP package (10 of 15).

Security & auth Grounding with Bing Search +20

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.

You.com APIs 59

Several keys per organisation in the X-API-Key header, revoked immediately on delete, rotation by create-then-delete, and roles where developers see only their own keys. The hosted MCP takes OAuth 2.1. No per-key scopes documented. No secret in a URL (22). Tool allow-lists on the MCP, a two-tool free profile and no tool that writes or deletes. Since 5 October a key can carry a spending cap per billing period, and a capped key answers 429 spend_cap_exceeded when it's reached, which bounds what a leaked or runaway key can spend, as kagi-search's per-key cap does (18). Search and Contents return untrusted page text. The only content control we found is safesearch, and no prompt-injection guidance (2). The key list shows a last-used date and each capped key's spend, and the troubleshooting page says Platform Logs list recent requests with error messages, response details and a request ID. No retention period, logs API or audit log of key actions was found, so 9, between numeral's 8 for a dashboard Logs tab and deepgram-stt's 10 for console and API logs (9). trust.you.com, a Vanta trust centre, links a vulnerability disclosure page and a subprocessor list but rendered only with JavaScript on 1 November, security.txt returned 404 on you.com, and the MCP repo runs Semgrep in CI (8).

Reliability You.com APIs +12

Grounding with Bing Search 68

Graded on the hosted lines, for the Foundry Agent Service tools agents call. Azure status page with post-incident reviews and a Foundry Agent Service component (20). The history page read on 6 November lists one review in the 90 days from 8 August that names Foundry Agent Service, intermittent failures and latency in Sweden Central from 10:03 to 15:58 UTC on 29 September 2026. It was one region and partial, and the review doesn't name Grounding with Bing, so minor only, the reading the Azure Translator listing got for the same review (20). The pricing page publishes 150 transactions a second and 1 million a day for each Grounding with Bing resource (15). The web search troubleshooting table says to answer 429 with exponential backoff and retries. No Retry-After or tool-specific overload guidance was found, and searches have no side effects (8 of 15). No SLA naming Grounding with Bing was found. The terms make it a First Party Consumption Service apart from the Online Services terms, and the Online Services SLA document wasn't opened (0). Grounding with Bing Custom Search is marked preview and Grounding with Bing Search is not, but no page read states general availability for it or for the web_search tool, and the .NET SDK is in preview (5 of 10). 20 + 20 + 15 + 8 + 0 + 5 = 68.

You.com APIs 80

Rootly status page at status.you.com with Search/Index, Live News and AI Search API components (20). Its robots.txt loaded on 1 November, but incident pages still answered with a Cloudflare challenge, so we read the history RSS feed as before. In the 90 days to 1 November it lists one incident, an 'Authentication Outage' on the AI Search API component posted on 5 October, and nothing after it. The feed gives no duration, so we couldn't establish the outage as a major. Minor only (20). 10 requests a second per API and 5 for Finance Research on self-serve accounts, re-read on 1 November (15). 429 carries Retry-After, the docs give exponential backoff capped at 60 seconds, and X-RateLimit-* headers allow client-side throttling (15). No SLA found for the search APIs. The pricing page banner claims an uptime SLA of at least 99.9% for the new Inference Router, but we found no SLA document (0). GA (10).

Maintenance & community You.com APIs +5

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.

You.com APIs 85

@youdotcom-oss/mcp 4.0.7 tagged on 2026-10-28 and an API changelog entry on 26 October for the Inference Router (30). MCP 4.0.5, 4.0.6 and 4.0.7 between 19 and 28 October, all version-bump publishes, and API changelog entries on 4, 5 and 11 August, 2 and 23 September and 5, 7, 9 and 26 October (20). A dated public API changelog, support at api@you.com and a support page, and the MCP repo merges changes weekly. We didn't read the open issues (11). Listed in the official MCP registry as io.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp at 4.0.7, with a current Python SDK (3.6.0, 14 October). The TypeScript SDK is deprecated (15). CI, Semgrep and conventional commits on the MCP repo (9).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGrounding with Bing SearchYou.com APIsEdge
Reliability16%206880You.com APIs +12
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26892You.com APIs +24
Agent ergonomics13%16.26183You.com APIs +22
Security & auth14%17.57959Grounding with Bing Search +20
Payments & pricing10%12.52088You.com APIs +68
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88085You.com APIs +5
Transparency & trust7%8.86667You.com APIs +1
Negative events≤150-3
TotalB 63.7/100BB 76.1/100

Facts side by side

FactGrounding with Bing SearchYou.com APIs
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorMicrosoftYou.com
Hosted endpointhttps://{account}.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/{project}/openai/v1/responseshttps://api.you.com/v1/search
TransportsStreamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuthOAuth or key
PricingPay per useFreemium
Price for web search$14 per 1,000 requests$5 per 1,000 requests
x402nopayer tooling only
LicenceProprietary service under the customer's Microsoft agreement and the separate Grounding with Bing terms of use, which exclude it from the Microsoft Data Protection Addendumnone
Tools exposed36
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listedio.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp
Last release2026-11-022026-10-28
Terms last updated2025-11-012024-08-27
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-012026-09-22
Customer content may train modelsyesyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularitynone4.4k npm/wk, 92k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.8/5 (8)

How the scores have moved

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.

You.com APIs

x402 and MPP on Web Search and Finance Research, with no account needed, and keys can carry a spending cap. Two API hosts, so Answer and Research return 'Missing Authentication Token' on ydc-index.io, and Python SDK 3.6.0 changed the default search response in a minor release.

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

You.com APIs

  1. For unattended runs call GET https://api.you.com/v1/search, handle the 402 and pay with x402. It's half the MPP price for search
  2. Use https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free to try search with no key (100 queries a day)
  3. Send Answer, Research and Finance Research to api.you.com. On ydc-index.io they fail with 'Missing Authentication Token'
  4. With Python SDK 3.6.0 or later, pass knowledge=None, extraction=None on search unless you want highlights and knowledge cards, which are on by default and may cost more
  5. Treat a 429 with spend_cap_exceeded as a budget stop, not a rate limit. Retrying won't clear it until the cap is raised

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Grounding with Bing Search or You.com APIs?

You.com APIs scores 76.1 (BB) on agent readiness against Grounding with Bing Search's 63.7 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Grounding with Bing Search leads on security & auth.

Which is cheaper for web search, Grounding with Bing Search or You.com APIs?

You.com APIs, at $5 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 You.com APIs need an API key?

Grounding with Bing Search uses an OAuth sign-in. You.com APIs takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Grounding with Bing Search and You.com APIs 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 You.com APIs at https://api.you.com/v1/search.

Other comparisons with Grounding with Bing Search or You.com APIs

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