Get an audit

Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

SearchAPI.io vs Valyu

Valyu has a score of 64.6 (B) against SearchAPI.io's 51.4 (D). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 65 points.

SearchAPI.ioSearchApi · HTTP API D51.4/100#351 of 452 ValyuValyu · HTTP API B64.6/100#179 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick SearchAPI.io for

  • reliability (+37)

Pick Valyu for

  • schema & documentation (+28)
  • agent ergonomics (+26)
  • security & auth (+16)
  • payments & pricing (+15)
  • maintenance & community (+65)
  • transparency & trust (+17)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSearchAPI.ioValyuEdge
Reliability16%209053SearchAPI.io +37
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25987Valyu +28
Agent ergonomics13%16.25278Valyu +26
Security & auth14%17.52844Valyu +16
Payments & pricing10%12.53045Valyu +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81580Valyu +65
Transparency & trust7%8.86279Valyu +17
Negative events≤1500
Total51.4 · D64.6 · B

Facts side by side

FactSearchAPI.ioValyu
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorSearchApiValyu
Hosted endpointhttps://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/searchhttps://api.valyu.ai/v1/search
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
Licencenonenone
Tools exposednone6
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registryio.searchapi/mcpnot listed
Last releasenone2026-09-12
Popularitynone19 stars, 6.7k npm/wk, 7.1k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (2)4.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

SearchAPI.io

99.9% SLA on every plan and no incidents on the status page since August. MCP exposes over 100 tools with no toolsets.

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.

Before you call either

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, not the registry's ?token= URL
  3. Call the REST API with engine= when context is tight. The MCP loads over 100 tool definitions
  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

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

Other comparisons with SearchAPI.io or Valyu

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report