# Perplexity Search API vs You.com APIs (slim)

> You.com scores 76.1 (BB) to Perplexity Search's 70.2 (BB) for web search. Perplexity Search is cheaper for web search, $1 against $5 per 1,000 requests. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-search-api-vs-you-com-api.md (~3,850 tokens) · this version ~1,180 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-search-api-vs-you-com-api.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/perplexity-search-api-vs-you-com-api
- 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)

You.com APIs scores 76.1 (BB) on agent readiness against Perplexity Search API's 70.2 (BB), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do web search. Perplexity Search API is cheaper for web search, $1 against $5 per 1,000 requests.

- Perplexity Search API: BB 70.2, rank #210 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/perplexity-search-api.min.md
- You.com APIs: BB 76.1, rank #48 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/you-com-api.min.md
- Perplexity Search API, good for Agents on any model that need raw ranked sources with extracted text at a low per-request price, and teams that want cited answers from the same key through the Agent API. Also Cheaper for web search, $1 against $5 per 1,000 requests; No incidents deducted, where You.com APIs loses 3 points for them.
- You.com APIs, good for An unattended agent that needs search, page text and cited answers and wants to pay per call without an account. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 88 against 25. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | Perplexity Search API | You.com APIs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 80 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 89 | 92 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 85 | 83 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 56 | 59 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 88 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 82 | 85 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 66 | 67 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Perplexity Search API | You.com APIs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Perplexity | You.com |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.perplexity.ai/mcp` | `https://api.you.com/v1/search` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for web search | $1 per 1,000 requests | $5 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Perplexity API Terms of Service. The MCP server is MIT and the official SDKs Apache-2.0 | none |
| Tools exposed | 4 | 6 |
| MCP registry | `ai.perplexity/mcp-server` | `io.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-23 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2024-08-27 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-09-22 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | none | 4.4k npm/wk, 92k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.8/5 (8) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, You.com APIs +63: Perplexity Search API 25 (No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs, pricing page, OpenAPI or llms.txt (0). $5 per 1,000 successful requests, $1 with Fast Search, published without a login, with failed and rate-limited requests not billed (20). Usage is prepaid with a card on the billing page, and no free allowance was found. The console playground needs no key but is a page for a person, not an API allowance (0). A person signs up in the console. The Stripe Projects route provisions a project, key and credits from a terminal, but needs a person's Stripe account with a payment method and a $10 minimum purchase (5 of 20, as on the Decisions API listing). 0 + 20 + 0 + 5 = 25.); You.com APIs 88 (x402 (USDC on Base or Solana) and MPP (USDC on Tempo) on GET /v1/search, /v1/agents/search and POST /v1/finance_research. On 1 November an unpaid GET https://api.you.com/v1/search returned 402 with an x402 v2 `PAYMENT-REQUIRED` challenge for 5,000 base units of USDC on Base and on Solana and an MPP `WWW-Authenticate: Payment` challenge on Tempo, and an unpaid POST /v1/finance_research returned the same pair, with x402 at 110,000 base units. Contents, Answer and Research still need a key (28). Per-call and per-page prices published without a login (20). The pricing FAQ now says $10 of API credit on sign-up and $90 more on verifying the account, no card, with sign-up credits valid 60 days. The Web Search card on the same page says '$10 free credit' (20). The MCP free profile needs no key (100 queries a day), and x402 or MPP needs no account (20).)