# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-linkup
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-linkup.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-linkup.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-linkup.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

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 + MCP: grade B, 68.1/100, rank #132 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/brave-search-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/brave-search-mcp.json
- Linkup: grade B, 69.1/100, rank #116 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/linkup.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/linkup.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | Brave Search API + MCP | Linkup | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 70 | Linkup +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 88 | Linkup +16 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 76 | Linkup +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 32 | Brave Search API + MCP +26 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 70 | 80 | Linkup +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 83 | Brave Search API + MCP +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 64 | Brave Search API + MCP +18 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.1 · B** | **69.1 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Brave Search API + MCP | Linkup |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Brave | Linkup |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search` | `https://api.linkup.so/v1/search` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | payer tooling only | yes, from $0.01/call |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 8 | 4 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.brave/brave-search-mcp-server` | `so.linkup.mcp/linkup-mcp-server` |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk | 29 stars, 54k npm/wk, 84k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (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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