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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Brave Search API + MCP vs Linkup

Linkup has a score of 69.1 (B) against Brave Search API + MCP's 68.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is security & auth, 26 points. Linkup accepts x402. Brave Search API + MCP doesn't.

Brave Search API + MCPBrave · HTTP API B68.1/100#132 of 452 LinkupLinkup · HTTP API B69.1/100#116 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Brave Search API + MCP for

  • security & auth (+26)
  • transparency & trust (+18)

Pick Linkup for

  • reliability (+15)
  • schema & documentation (+16)
  • payments & pricing (+10)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBrave Search API + MCPLinkupEdge
Reliability16%205570Linkup +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27288Linkup +16
Agent ergonomics13%16.27276Linkup +4
Security & auth14%17.55832Brave Search API + MCP +26
Payments & pricing10%12.57080Linkup +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88783Brave Search API + MCP +4
Transparency & trust7%8.88264Brave Search API + MCP +18
Negative events≤1500
Total68.1 · B69.1 · B

Facts side by side

FactBrave Search API + MCPLinkup
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBraveLinkup
Hosted endpointhttps://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/searchhttps://api.linkup.so/v1/search
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per useFreemium
x402payer tooling onlyyes, from $0.01/call
LicenceMITnone
Tools exposed84
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.brave/brave-search-mcp-serverso.linkup.mcp/linkup-mcp-server
Last release2026-09-172026-09-30
Popularity1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk29 stars, 54k npm/wk, 84k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)4/5 (2)

Verdicts

Brave Search API + MCP

x402 proxy sells web, LLM Context, news, video, image and local search at $0.005 a call, and a failed search isn't charged. The status page marks the Search API "not monitored" and shows no incident history.

Linkup

Per-call prices from $0.005, and no credit taken for errors, missing parameters or empty results. 429 covers both exhausted credit and rate limiting, with no Retry-After.

Before you call either

Brave Search API + MCP

  1. Call /res/v1/llm/context when you need page text rather than links. It saves a separate fetch
  2. Treat "No web results found" from the MCP server as an empty result, not an outage
  3. On 429, wait for X-RateLimit-Reset seconds. There's no Retry-After header
  4. Skip brave_summarizer. The Summarizer is deprecated and the x402 proxy doesn't sell it
  5. Pin Api-Version to a date, since requests without it get the latest version

Linkup

  1. On 429, check the credit balance before backing off. The same code means out of credit
  2. Pass reasoningDepth: "S" to research unless you need more. The MCP default is L at $1.50
  3. Start with depth=fast and outputType=searchResults. Deep costs $0.05, ten times as much
  4. Send the key as an Authorization: Bearer header, not ?apiKey= or a command-line argument
  5. Poll linkup-get-research with the task id. Research runs take minutes

Other comparisons with Brave Search API + MCP or Linkup

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