Head to head · Fetching pages · October 2026 research run
Fetch (MCP reference server) vs You.com APIs
You.com APIs has a score of 76.9 (BB) against Fetch (MCP reference server)'s 57.6 (C). Both do fetching pages. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 40 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Fetch (MCP reference server) for
- transparency & trust (+12)
Pick You.com APIs for
- reliability (+32)
- schema & documentation (+12)
- agent ergonomics (+6)
- security & auth (+23)
- payments & pricing (+28)
- maintenance & community (+40)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Fetch (MCP reference server) | You.com APIs | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 53 | 85 | You.com APIs +32 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 70 | 82 | You.com APIs +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 78 | 84 | You.com APIs +6 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 30 | 53 | You.com APIs +23 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 88 | You.com APIs +28 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 42 | 82 | You.com APIs +40 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 75 | 63 | Fetch (MCP reference server) +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 57.6 · C | 76.9 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Fetch (MCP reference server) | You.com APIs |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | MCP project (reference servers) | You.com |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.you.com/v1/search |
| Transports | stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | MIT and Apache-2.0 | none |
| Tools exposed | 1 | 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 | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | io.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp |
| Last release | 2026-08-18 | 2026-09-22 |
| Popularity | 90k stars, 118k PyPI/wk | 4.4k npm/wk, 92k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 3.8/5 (8) |
Verdicts
Fetch (MCP reference server)
One tool of about 300 tokens, with max_length and start_index paging and a hint giving the next offset. Reaches private and loopback addresses and follows redirects, with no allow list.
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
Fetch (MCP reference server)
- Fetch with the 5,000-character default and continue from the
start_indexthe truncation note gives - Expect empty bodies from JavaScript-rendered sites and switch to a browser tool
- Treat a robots.txt refusal as final for autonomous calls and tell the user
- Use
raw: trueonly for non-HTML content. It skips the Markdown conversion and returns the page as served
You.com APIs
- 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
- Use
https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=freeto try search with no key (100 queries a day) - Send Answer, Research and Finance Research to api.you.com. On ydc-index.io they fail with 'Missing Authentication Token'
- Pass
?tools=with only the tools you need to keep the MCP tool list short - On 429, wait for
Retry-Afterand watchX-RateLimit-Remainingbefore the next burst
Other comparisons with Fetch (MCP reference server) or You.com APIs
- Brave Search API + MCP vs You.com APIs
- Exa API + MCP vs You.com APIs
- Firecrawl MCP vs You.com APIs
- Linkup vs You.com APIs
- Parallel Search and Task APIs vs You.com APIs
- SearchAPI.io vs You.com APIs
- SerpApi vs You.com APIs
- Serper vs You.com APIs
- Tavily API + MCP vs You.com APIs
- Valyu vs You.com APIs
- Exa API + MCP vs Fetch (MCP reference server)
- Fetch (MCP reference server) vs Linkup
- Fetch (MCP reference server) vs Parallel Search and Task APIs
- Fetch (MCP reference server) vs Tavily API + MCP
- Fetch (MCP reference server) vs Valyu
Disclosure
MCP started at Anthropic, which makes the Claude models our research agents and review panel run on (Anthropic donated it to the Agentic AI Foundation, a directed fund under the Linux Foundation, in December 2025), and this server is graded by the same checklist as every other listing.