# Liner Search MCP vs SearchAPI.io (slim)

> 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.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.md (~4,250 tokens) · this version ~2,130 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-searchapi-io.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-searchapi-io
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

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: E 43.4, rank #1252 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/liner-mcp.min.md
- SearchAPI.io: D 50.1, rank #1075 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/searchapi-io.min.md
- Liner Search MCP, 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.
- SearchAPI.io, 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 Free to start without a card.

| Category | Liner Search MCP | SearchAPI.io |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 50 | 90 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 45 | 59 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 65 | 52 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 35 | 28 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 45 | 0 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 34 | 62 |

| Fact (where they differ) | 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 |
| Tools exposed | 9 | none |
| 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) |

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).)