# Liner Search MCP vs SearchAPI.io

> SearchAPI.io scores 50.1 (D) to Liner Search MCP's 43.4 (E) for search serp. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-searchapi-io
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md (~4,250 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

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.

- Liner Search MCP: grade E, 43.4/100, rank #1252 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/liner-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/liner-mcp.json
- SearchAPI.io: grade D, 50.1/100, rank #1075 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/searchapi-io.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/searchapi-io.json
- Best web search APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/search/index.md
- All 326 search comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/search/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Liner Search MCP (E)

Good 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)

Good 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

### 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

| Category | Weight | Liner Search MCP | SearchAPI.io | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 90 | SearchAPI.io +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 45 | 59 | SearchAPI.io +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 52 | Liner Search MCP +13 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 35 | 28 | Liner Search MCP +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 30 | SearchAPI.io +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 0 | Liner Search MCP +45 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 34 | 62 | SearchAPI.io +28 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **43.4 · E** | **50.1 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Liner Search MCP | SearchAPI.io |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Liner | SearchApi |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://platform.liner.com/api/v1/mcp` | `https://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/search` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Tools exposed | 9 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | `com.liner/search` | `io.searchapi/mcp` |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-04-11 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-04-11 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Liner Search MCP

No score change since it was listed.

### SearchAPI.io

- -1.3 on 4 November 2026: correction
- +0.2 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- -0.2 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## 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.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "liner-mcp", "b": "searchapi-io"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare liner-mcp searchapi-io`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/liner-mcp.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/searchapi-io.json

## Other comparisons with Liner Search MCP or SearchAPI.io

- [Web Search Tool on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-web-search-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Arcmira vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arcmira-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Brave Search API + MCP vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Cloudflare Web Search API vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-web-search-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [DeepSeek Search and Fetch API vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepseek-search-api-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Firecrawl MCP vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/firecrawl-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Grep AI vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grep-ai-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Kagi Search API vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/kagi-search-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Linkup vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/linkup-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Mojeek Web Search API vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mojeek-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Parallel Search and Task APIs vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/parallel-search-api-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Perplexity Search API vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-search-api-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs SerpApi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serpapi.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serper.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs SERPHouse](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serphouse.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-serpkite.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs SpecStream](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-specstream.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-valyu.md)
- [SearchAPI.io vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/searchapi-io-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [Arcmira vs Liner Search MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arcmira-vs-liner-mcp.md)
- [Exa API + MCP vs Liner Search MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/exa-mcp-vs-liner-mcp.md)
- [Grep AI vs Liner Search MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grep-ai-vs-liner-mcp.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs Linkup](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-linkup.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-newscatcher.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs Parallel Search and Task APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-parallel-search-api.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs Perplexity Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-perplexity-search-api.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs SpecStream](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-specstream.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs Tavily API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs TinyFish Search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-tinyfish-search.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-valyu.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs You.com APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-you-com-api.md)
- [NewsCatcher vs SearchAPI.io](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-searchapi-io.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs SerpApi](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-serpapi.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs Serper](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-serper.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs SERPHouse](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-serphouse.md)
- [Liner Search MCP vs SerpKite](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-serpkite.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs Liner Search MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-liner-mcp.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp