# Brave Search API + MCP vs You.com APIs

> You.com APIs has a score of 76.9 (BB) against Brave Search API + MCP's 68.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is reliability, 30 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-you-com-api
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-you-com-api.md (~1,750 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-you-com-api.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-you-com-api.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

You.com APIs has a score of 76.9 (BB) against Brave Search API + MCP's 68.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is reliability, 30 points.

- 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
- You.com APIs: grade BB, 76.9/100, rank #24 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/you-com-api.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/you-com-api.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Brave Search API + MCP for security & auth (+5), maintenance & community (+5), transparency & trust (+19).

Pick You.com APIs for reliability (+30), schema & documentation (+10), agent ergonomics (+12), payments & pricing (+18).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Brave Search API + MCP | You.com APIs | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 85 | You.com APIs +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 82 | You.com APIs +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 84 | You.com APIs +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 53 | Brave Search API + MCP +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 70 | 88 | You.com APIs +18 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 82 | Brave Search API + MCP +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 63 | Brave Search API + MCP +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.1 · B** | **76.9 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Brave Search API + MCP | You.com APIs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Brave | You.com |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search` | `https://api.you.com/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 | payer tooling only |
| Licence | MIT | none |
| Tools exposed | 8 | 6 |
| 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` | `io.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-22 |
| Popularity | 1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk | 4.4k npm/wk, 92k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.8/5 (8) |

## 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.

**You.com APIs.** x402 and MPP on Web Search and Finance Research, with no account needed. Two API hosts. Answer and Research return 'Missing Authentication Token' on ydc-index.io.

## 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

### 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. Pass `?tools=` with only the tools you need to keep the MCP tool list short
5. On 429, wait for `Retry-After` and watch `X-RateLimit-Remaining` before the next burst

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