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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

SearchAPI.io vs You.com APIs

You.com APIs has a score of 76.9 (BB) against SearchAPI.io's 51.4 (D). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 67 points.

SearchAPI.ioSearchApi · HTTP API D51.4/100#351 of 452 You.com APIsYou.com · HTTP API BB76.9/100#24 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick SearchAPI.io for

  • reliability (+5)

Pick You.com APIs for

  • schema & documentation (+23)
  • agent ergonomics (+32)
  • security & auth (+25)
  • payments & pricing (+58)
  • maintenance & community (+67)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runSearchAPI.ioYou.com APIsEdge
Reliability16%209085SearchAPI.io +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25982You.com APIs +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.25284You.com APIs +32
Security & auth14%17.52853You.com APIs +25
Payments & pricing10%12.53088You.com APIs +58
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81582You.com APIs +67
Transparency & trust7%8.86263You.com APIs +1
Negative events≤1500
Total51.4 · D76.9 · BB

Facts side by side

FactSearchAPI.ioYou.com APIs
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorSearchApiYou.com
Hosted endpointhttps://www.searchapi.io/api/v1/searchhttps://api.you.com/v1/search
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nopayer tooling only
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/mcpio.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp
Last releasenone2026-09-22
Popularitynone4.4k npm/wk, 92k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (2)3.8/5 (8)

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.

You.com APIs

x402 and MPP on Web Search and Finance Research, with no account needed. Two API hosts. Answer and Research return 'Missing Authentication Token' on ydc-index.io.

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

You.com APIs

  1. For unattended runs call GET https://api.you.com/v1/search, handle the 402 and pay with x402. It's half the MPP price for search
  2. Use https://api.you.com/mcp?profile=free to try search with no key (100 queries a day)
  3. Send Answer, Research and Finance Research to api.you.com. On ydc-index.io they fail with 'Missing Authentication Token'
  4. Pass ?tools= with only the tools you need to keep the MCP tool list short
  5. On 429, wait for Retry-After and watch X-RateLimit-Remaining before the next burst

Other comparisons with SearchAPI.io or You.com APIs

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