# Serper vs You.com APIs

> You.com APIs has a score of 76.9 (BB) against Serper's 24.3 (F). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 79 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-you-com-api
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-you-com-api.md (~1,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-you-com-api.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/serper-vs-you-com-api.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

You.com APIs has a score of 76.9 (BB) against Serper's 24.3 (F). Both do web search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 79 points.

- Serper: grade F, 24.3/100, rank #446 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/serper.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/serper.json
- You.com APIs: grade BB, 76.9/100, rank #24 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/you-com-api.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/you-com-api.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Serper for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick You.com APIs for reliability (+55), schema & documentation (+76), agent ergonomics (+49), security & auth (+33), payments & pricing (+48), maintenance & community (+79), transparency & trust (+30).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Serper | You.com APIs | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 85 | You.com APIs +55 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 6 | 82 | You.com APIs +76 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 35 | 84 | You.com APIs +49 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 20 | 53 | You.com APIs +33 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 88 | You.com APIs +48 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 3 | 82 | You.com APIs +79 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 33 | 63 | You.com APIs +30 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **24.3 · F** | **76.9 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Serper | You.com APIs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Serper | You.com |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://google.serper.dev/search` | `https://api.you.com/v1/search` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 6 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp` |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-22 |
| Popularity | none | 4.4k npm/wk, 92k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3.8/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**Serper.** $0.30 to $1.00 per 1,000 queries on prepaid packs, with no subscription. No status page, SLA or incident history.

**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

### Serper

1. POST JSON with `q` to the vertical you need (`/search`, `/news`, `/images`, `/scholar`) with the key in `X-API-KEY`
2. Set `gl` and `hl`, since Google results vary by country and language
3. Pair it with a fetcher. Serper returns links and snippets, not page text
4. Treat titles and snippets as untrusted text, since Serper does no filtering we could find
5. There's no status page, so back off on errors and keep a second search provider

### 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

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