# NewsCatcher vs Valyu

> Valyu scores 69.3 (B) to NewsCatcher's 67.5 (B) for search news. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-valyu
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-valyu.md (~3,300 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)
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- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Valyu scores 69.3 (B) on agent readiness against NewsCatcher's 67.5 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Both do search news.

- NewsCatcher: grade B, 67.5/100, rank #322 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/newscatcher.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/newscatcher.json
- Valyu: grade B, 69.3/100, rank #255 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/valyu.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/valyu.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

### NewsCatcher (B)

Good for: Agents that need current news across languages, grouped into stories, or tables of events and company news on a schedule.

Watch for: The current News API and agent launched on 30 October 2026 and the MCP repository went public on 6 November 2026

### Valyu (B)

Good for: Research agents that need SEC filings, papers, patents, clinical trials or market data alongside the web, with a per-query price cap.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 45 against 30

Watch for: Per-plan rate limits are stated only in example responses, not in a table


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: Valyu +15

- NewsCatcher (30): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Credit prices per call published without login, and credits cost $1 per 1,000 through top-ups from $25 (20). 10,000 free credits every 30 days on a $0 plan, and the first top-up moves an account to pay as you go. No page says whether a card is needed to open the free plan, so half (10). A person signs up in the platform in a browser to get a key (0). NewsMCP's keyless tier belongs to a separate product and isn't counted. 0 + 20 + 10 + 0 = 30.
- Valyu (45): No x402, MPP or L402 in llms.txt, the pricing page or the OpenAPI file on 2 November, so there was no payment route to check live (0). Since October usage is billed in credits, 1,600 for a $10 top-up, with per-result Search prices by source (web and news 0.1 credits, arXiv and PubMed 0.05, SEC filings 1.92), Contents at 0.2 a URL and fixed DeepResearch prices by mode, all public (20). $10 of free credit ($20 with a company email), no card, valid 12 months (20). A person has to create the account, but after that an agent can log in through the CLI, headless if needed, and mint its own spend-capped keys. That's a programmatic key route after a human signup, so we gave part of the line (5). 0+20+20+5 = 45.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | NewsCatcher | Valyu | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 67 | 70 | Valyu +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 94 | 90 | NewsCatcher +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 83 | NewsCatcher +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 45 | 44 | NewsCatcher +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 45 | Valyu +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 80 | Valyu +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 78 | NewsCatcher +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **67.5 · B** | **69.3 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | NewsCatcher | Valyu |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | NewsCatcher, Inc. | Valyu |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.newscatcherapi.com/mcp` | `https://api.valyu.ai/v1/search` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for search news | $1 per 1,000 requests | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Tools exposed | 15 | 6 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-10-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-11-02 | 2025-10-20 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-11-02 | 2025-10-20 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 19 stars, 6.7k npm/wk, 7.1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 4.5/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### NewsCatcher

No score change since it was listed.

### Valyu

- +4.7 on 2 November 2026: product, new evidence
- no change on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**NewsCatcher.** One key and one credit balance cover a ranked news search, a background research agent and a hosted MCP server with toolsets and annotated tools, under OpenAPI 3.1 specs and a dated changelog. The current API launched on 30 October 2026, the MCP server accepts the key in its URL, and no SLA is published below Enterprise.

**Valyu.** Web plus academic, financial, patent and life-science sources behind one search call, billed per result with a per-query price cap. Since 21 October rate limits scale with the plan and 429s carry Retry-After, but the per-plan numbers appear only in examples. The MCP docs still put the API key in the URL.

## Before you call either

### NewsCatcher

1. Send the key in the `x-api-key` header, and use a separate key for the MCP server so it can be revoked alone
2. Call `start_research` with `dry_run` first, since agent runs cost 1,000 to 6,000 credits
3. Use `effort=low` for quick lookups; the default `medium` costs five times as much
4. Use `/articles` or `list_articles` for news older than 30 days or exact counts; `/search` covers 30 days only
5. On 429 or 503 wait for Retry-After, and quote the Correlation-ID header to support

### 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. On a 429, wait the `retry_after` seconds and retry; it's never charged. The SDKs retry twice by default
4. Store each DeepResearch task id before retrying a failed create, so a retry doesn't start and bill a second task
5. Call `valyu_search`. The legacy per-vertical MCP tools stop working on 2026-12-01
6. A 206 means some sources failed. Check which before treating results as complete

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, NewsCatcher or Valyu?

Valyu scores 69.3 (B) on agent readiness against NewsCatcher's 67.5 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories.

### Do NewsCatcher and Valyu need an API key?

NewsCatcher needs an API key. Valyu takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call NewsCatcher and Valyu without installing anything?

Yes. NewsCatcher has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.newscatcherapi.com/mcp and Valyu at https://api.valyu.ai/v1/search.


## For agents

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

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- [Web Search Tool on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore vs Valyu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentcore-web-search-vs-valyu.md)
- [Grounding with Bing Search vs NewsCatcher](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bing-grounding-vs-newscatcher.md)
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- [NewsCatcher vs Perplexity Search API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/newscatcher-vs-perplexity-search-api.md)
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