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Head to head · Web search · October 2026 research run

Valyu vs You.com APIs

You.com APIs has a score of 76.9 (BB) against Valyu's 64.6 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 43 points.

ValyuValyu · HTTP API B64.6/100#179 of 452 You.com APIsYou.com · HTTP API BB76.9/100#24 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Valyu for

  • schema & documentation (+5)
  • transparency & trust (+16)

Pick You.com APIs for

  • reliability (+32)
  • agent ergonomics (+6)
  • security & auth (+9)
  • payments & pricing (+43)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runValyuYou.com APIsEdge
Reliability16%205385You.com APIs +32
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28782Valyu +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.27884You.com APIs +6
Security & auth14%17.54453You.com APIs +9
Payments & pricing10%12.54588You.com APIs +43
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88082You.com APIs +2
Transparency & trust7%8.87963Valyu +16
Negative events≤1500
Total64.6 · B76.9 · BB

Facts side by side

FactValyuYou.com APIs
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorValyuYou.com
Hosted endpointhttps://api.valyu.ai/v1/searchhttps://api.you.com/v1/search
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nopayer tooling only
Licencenonenone
Tools exposed66
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.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listedio.github.youdotcom-oss/mcp
Last release2026-09-122026-09-22
Popularity19 stars, 6.7k npm/wk, 7.1k PyPI/wk4.4k npm/wk, 92k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews4.5/5 (2)3.8/5 (8)

Verdicts

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.

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

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

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 Valyu or You.com APIs

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