Head to head · Search serp · October 2026 research run

Liner Search MCP vs SearchAPI.io

SearchAPI.io scores 50.1 (D) on agent readiness against Liner Search MCP's 43.4 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Liner Search MCP leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do search serp.

Best web search APIs for AI agents · All 326 search comparisons

Which one, for what

Liner Search MCP E

Best for Agents that need cheap cited search across the web and scholarly sources, with optional deep research reports.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 65 against 52
  • Security & auth, 35 against 28
  • Maintenance & community, 45 against 0

Watch for

No free tier found

SearchAPI.io D

Best for Agents that need parsed results from many engines, especially shopping, ads, travel and social sources, at a low price per search.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 90 against 50
  • Schema & documentation, 59 against 45
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
  • Transparency & trust, 62 against 34

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

MCP loads one tool per engine with no toolsets

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.

Maintenance & community Liner Search MCP +45

Liner Search MCP 45

Registry entry com.liner/search last updated 11 September 2026 (20). No dated changelog found (0). Support page linked from the docs (10 of 15). Official registry entry under its own namespace (15). No package to read (0). 20 + 0 + 10 + 15 + 0 = 45. Registry presence read from Anchor Terminal's own daily import of the official MCP registry (/api/v1/registry.json, 6 November 2026), not the registry's API.

SearchAPI.io 0

No changelog (/changelog answered 404 on 4 November 2026) and no dated API change found, so the last release can't be dated (0). No releases to count (0). No public issue tracker or changelog to judge replies by. A Discord server is linked from the footer and wasn't tested (0). The 15 for io.searchapi/mcp in the official MCP registry rested on a reading of the registry's JSON API, which this run doesn't use, and no ordinary registry page shows the entry, so the line falls to 0, as graphiti, linear-mcp and copilot-studio-mcp read it. No official SDKs were found; the footer links a GitHub organisation whose pages answered 403 (0, 15 before). No public packages or CI (0). 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0.

Reliability SearchAPI.io +40

Liner Search MCP 50

incident.io status page at status.liner.com with components for liner.com and app.liner.com only, none for the API or MCP (15). 100% uptime shown since August (20, no incidents shown). Rate limits published per API with numbers (Scholar Search 2 requests a second, agents 2 a second) (15). 429 with a code for concurrency limits, no Retry-After or backoff guidance found (0 of 15). No SLA found (0). Not labelled beta (0 of 10; 'limits may be adjusted over time', GA not stated). 15 + 20 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 50.

SearchAPI.io 90

Honeybadger status page at status.searchapi.io with Landing Page and API components and monthly history (20). Re-read on 4 November 2026, it shows no incidents in September, October or November 2026, and its incident feed's newest entry is the 11 February 2026 partial outage, so the window from 6 August is clean (30). The hourly cap is published, 20 per cent of the plan's monthly searches in any hour (15). The OpenAPI file lists a 429 response with an error string, but no Retry-After or backoff guidance was found. The partial 5 is kept pending the founder's rule on in-between values (5). The terms of 11 April 2026 give a 99.9% SLA for all plans with a credit of 100% of the monthly price, and the pricing page lists it on every plan (10). GA (10). 20 + 30 + 15 + 5 + 10 + 10 = 90.

Transparency & trust SearchAPI.io +28

Liner Search MCP 34

Terms and privacy linked from the docs but not read in this batch (5 of 30). Data handling not read (5 of 30). No deprecation policy found for the MCP server; the docs note older endpoints priced per version (5 of 20). Subprocessors not read (5 of 20). 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 20.

SearchAPI.io 62

Closed service with published terms (15). Privacy policy dated 11 April 2026. Data sits in the US, cached results are purged on an unstated schedule, and zero retention is Enterprise only (15). Google's num phase-out is documented, and there's no deprecation policy (3). US data location stated, and the privacy policy links a subprocessor page (15).

Schema & documentation SearchAPI.io +14

Liner Search MCP 45

Tool schemas not read without sign-in (15 of 25). llms.txt (10). A table says which tool fits which need, and that the domain tools return the same shape as search_web (12 of 20). Inputs not verifiable (3 of 15). Setup examples, no error responses (5 of 15). Registry version 1.0.0 since 11 September; no changelog found (0). 15 + 10 + 12 + 3 + 5 + 0 = 45.

SearchAPI.io 59

OpenAPI 3.0 for the Google engine at /openapi/google.yaml with 25 typed parameters. We found no index of specs for the other engines, so 20 of 25. No llms.txt (404 on 4 November 2026) and no Markdown docs for agents (0). The API reference explains each parameter, and the MCP tool definitions aren't public (10). Enums for device, country, language, safe search and time period (14). Examples and a Postman collection, and the spec documents 400, 401, 403, 429 and 500 (12). /api/v1 in the path and no changelog anywhere we looked (3).

Agent ergonomics Liner Search MCP +13

Liner Search MCP 65

Nine tools (25). No paging or size controls documented (5 of 20). 429 codes documented for the API (8 of 20). All tools read; annotations not read (12 of 20). One URL with OAuth, few required inputs and an OpenAI-compatible API (15). 25 + 5 + 8 + 12 + 15 = 65.

SearchAPI.io 52

The MCP exposes over 100 tools, one or more per engine, with no toolsets or filtering documented (5). page, time_period, location, country, language and safe search. Google's num has been fixed at 10 since September 2025 (18). Status codes are documented, but not how to recover from each (12). Searches are reads, and only HTTP 200 responses are billed, so retries are cheap. MCP annotations aren't visible (10). Two required parameters, engine and q. No official SDKs (7).

Payments & pricing SearchAPI.io +10

Liner Search MCP 20

No machine payment protocol (0). Per-call prices public (20). No free tier found (0). A person signs up in a browser for OAuth or an API key (0). 0 + 20 + 0 + 0 = 20.

SearchAPI.io 30

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Monthly plans only, priced in public, from $40 for 10,000 searches to $5,000 for 5 million (10). 100 free requests with no card (20). A person has to sign up in a browser (0).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLiner Search MCPSearchAPI.ioEdge
Reliability16%205090SearchAPI.io +40
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24559SearchAPI.io +14
Agent ergonomics13%16.26552Liner Search MCP +13
Security & auth14%17.53528Liner Search MCP +7
Payments & pricing10%12.52030SearchAPI.io +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8450Liner Search MCP +45
Transparency & trust7%8.83462SearchAPI.io +28
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 43.4/100D 50.1/100

Facts side by side

FactLiner Search MCPSearchAPI.io
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorLinerSearchApi
Hosted endpointhttps://platform.liner.com/api/v1/mcphttps://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search
TransportsStreamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuthOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
Tools exposed9none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
MCP registrycom.liner/searchio.searchapi/mcp
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-04-11
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-04-11
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetnot found in the text
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (2)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Liner Search MCP

Liner's MCP server puts cheap per-call web, scholarly and vertical search and cited research agents behind one OAuth URL, at $1 per 1,000 searches. The docs say which tool fits which question, but there's no free tier, no changelog, no injection guidance and no status component for the API.

SearchAPI.io

A 99.9% SLA in the terms on every plan, no status-page incidents since 11 February 2026, and over 150 engine endpoints behind one URL. The MCP loads one tool per engine with no toolsets, there is no changelog or official SDK, and every account starts with a browser signup.

Before you call either

Liner Search MCP

  1. Use search_scholar for papers and the domain tools for legal, finance, medical or business questions
  2. Deep research is slower and costs more; use quick_answer_agent for short lookups
  3. Treat search results and research reports as untrusted content
  4. Keep under 2 requests a second for scholar search and the agents

SearchAPI.io

  1. Send the key as Authorization: Bearer, not api_key= in the URL
  2. Connect the MCP through OAuth or the X-MCP-Token header. Never put the token in the MCP URL
  3. Call the REST API with engine= when context is tight. The MCP loads one tool definition per engine
  4. Page Google results with page. num is fixed at 10
  5. Pace bursts. One hour can use at most 20 per cent of the plan's monthly searches

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Liner Search MCP or SearchAPI.io?

SearchAPI.io scores 50.1 (D) on agent readiness against Liner Search MCP's 43.4 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Liner Search MCP leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and maintenance & community.

Do Liner Search MCP and SearchAPI.io need an API key?

Liner Search MCP uses an OAuth sign-in. SearchAPI.io takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Liner Search MCP and SearchAPI.io without installing anything?

Yes. Liner Search MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://platform.liner.com/api/v1/mcp and SearchAPI.io at https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search.

Other comparisons with Liner Search MCP or SearchAPI.io

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