Linkup vs Valyu

Linkup

Per-call prices from $0.005, and no credit taken for errors, missing parameters or empty results. 429 covers both exhausted credit and rate limiting, with no Retry-After.

Valyu

Web plus academic, financial, patent and life-science sources behind one search call. No published rate limits and no Retry-After or backoff guidance.

Linkup

1. On 429, check the credit balance before backing off. The same code means out of credit
2. Pass reasoningDepth: "S" to research unless you need more. The MCP default is L at $1.50
3. Start with depth=fast and outputType=searchResults. Deep costs $0.05, ten times as much
4. Send the key as an Authorization: Bearer header, not ?apiKey= or a command-line argument
5. Poll linkup-get-research with the task id. Research runs take minutes

Valyu

1. Set max_price and max_num_results on every search to bound cost
2. Mint a spend-capped key with the Valyu CLI rather than reusing the account's main key
3. Call valyu_search. The legacy per-vertical MCP tools stop working on 2026-12-01
4. A 206 means some sources failed. Check which before treating results as complete
5. DeepResearch is async. Poll valyu_deepresearch_status rather than waiting in one call