You.com
Real-time web search APIs that ground AI agents and LLMs with accurate, cited answers from live sources.
our score
Quick verdict
You.com delivers fast, cited web search APIs for AI agents, but premium research tiers get pricey fast.
At a glance
- Best for
- AI engineers building agentic apps needing real-time web grounding
- Not for
- Hobbyists needing a free perpetual tier or simple site-scraping only
- Standout feature
- Finance Research API with cited, structured intelligence
- Pricing range
- $1 → $110 per 1k API calls
- Free tier
- No
- Primary use case
- Grounding LLMs and agents with live web search and citations
What is You.com?
You.com is an AI-native web search infrastructure company offering a suite of APIs designed to ground large language models (LLMs) and autonomous agents in real-time, factual web data. Originally known for its consumer search engine, the company has pivoted aggressively into the B2B infrastructure layer, positioning itself as "The Real-Time Web Data Layer for AI." Its product portfolio includes four core APIs: Search, Contents, Research, and Finance Research, each targeting different levels of information retrieval complexity—from simple result listings to deep, multi-step synthesis with inline citations.
The platform is built for developers and enterprise teams who need more than raw HTML dumps. You.com emphasizes LLM-ready outputs, providing structured snippets, clean Markdown or HTML extraction, and source-backed answers that reduce hallucination in downstream AI systems. The company touts significant enterprise traction, listing OpenAI, Amazon, Alibaba, Databricks, Salesforce, and DuckDuckGo among its customers, and claims industry-leading latency (300ms p99) and uptime (99.99%). With SOC 2 certification, zero-data-retention policies, and DPA-ready contracts, You.com targets security-conscious organizations that require audited data handling while scaling search-intensive AI workloads.
How it works
Developers interact with You.com through a Python SDK, a REST API, or an MCP Server. After obtaining an API key, users instantiate a client and call specific endpoints based on their use case. The Search API accepts a query string and returns up to 100 results per call, including titles, URLs, and LLM-ready contextual snippets, with optional country and language filters. The Contents API takes a list of URLs and returns extracted full-page content in either clean Markdown or raw HTML, enabling batch processing of source material for RAG pipelines or content analysis workflows.
For more complex queries, the Research API offers tiered effort levels—Lite, Standard, Deep, Exhaustive, and Frontier—that trigger multi-step search and synthesis pipelines. A developer sets the desired research depth via an enum (e.g., `ResearchEffort.LITE`) and receives a generated answer with enumerated source citations. The Finance Research API operates similarly but specializes in financial workflows, accepting natural-language prompts and returning cited answers reconciled across filings, macro data, and market sources. All APIs are usage-based, with separate metering per endpoint, and enterprise customers can negotiate custom queries-per-second (QPS) limits and annual commitments.
Key features
01Search API with News Endpoint
Delivers up to 100 results per call with LLM-ready contextual snippets and rich metadata per result. The Search API includes a dedicated News endpoint at no extra cost, enabling agents to retrieve breaking news updates alongside standard web results. Developers can apply country and language targeting filters to localize results, making it suitable for global applications that require region-specific grounding data.
02Contents API with Dual Format Output
Fetches full-page content for multiple URLs in a single batch request, returning either clean Markdown or raw HTML per page. The endpoint is accessible directly or through the Search API's livecrawl parameter, streamlining content aggregation for RAG systems and knowledge bases. It offers reliable page extraction at scale and is compatible with the Python SDK, MCP Server, and REST API.
03Tiered Research API
Offers five configurable depth levels—from Lite to Frontier—that trigger multi-step search and synthesis pipelines across the open web. The API returns cited, source-backed answers with inline references, leveraging an AAAI Best Paper Award methodology. It is ranked #1 in DeepSearchQA accuracy benchmarks, making it ideal for agents that require verified, complex reasoning rather than simple link lists.
04Finance Research API
Purpose-built for financial intelligence, this API covers SEC filings, macro data, markets, and derived multi-step calculations. It is designed to avoid common fiscal-year, unit, and period-mismatch errors that plague general search tools. Answers include traceable [[n]] inline citations reconciled across sources, and the system scored 87.29% on the FinSearchComp benchmark, reflecting high precision for quantitative financial workflows.
05Enterprise Security & Compliance
Provides SOC 2 certified infrastructure with zero-data-retention options and DPA-ready agreements for enterprise procurement. All queries and associated data can be automatically purged after processing, giving organizations full control over data residency and storage duration. These controls make the platform suitable for regulated industries and security-conscious teams that cannot risk retaining sensitive search queries in third-party systems.
06Low-Latency Infrastructure
Claims 300ms p99 latency and 99.99% uptime, supporting over 10 million daily queries across its customer base. Enterprise plans include custom queries-per-second limits and performance optimization for high-volume production workloads. This infrastructure is designed to serve latency-sensitive agentic applications where slow or unavailable search would directly degrade end-user experience.
Pricing breakdown
Search API
$5.00 / 1k calls
Developers grounding agents with real-time web results and news.
- Up to 100 results per call
- Usage-based only, no flat-rate plan shown
- News endpoint included at no extra cost
Contents API
Popular$1.00 / 1k pages
Teams extracting clean page text or HTML for RAG and analysis pipelines.
- Priced per page fetched
- Batch multiple URLs per request
- Markdown or HTML output only
Research API — Lite
$12.00 / 1k calls
Applications needing cited, source-backed answers with adjustable research depth.
- Lite tier shown; Standard/Deep/Exhaustive/Frontier pricing not public
- Multi-step pipeline may increase latency vs Search API
- Cited answers require parsing inline references
Finance Research API — Deep
$110.00 / 1k calls
Financial services building cited research workflows over filings and macro data.
- Deep tier shown; Exhaustive pricing not public
- Highest per-call cost in the portfolio
- Specialized to financial domains only
Enterprise
Custom
High-volume organizations needing custom QPS, annual commits, and DPAs.
- Requires sales conversation
- Volume discounts and annual savings available
- Custom concurrency limits negotiated per contract
Reality check: New accounts receive $100 in free credits to start. Pricing is strictly usage-based per API product with no published flat-rate bundles; costs can escalate quickly under heavy Research or Finance API load. Volume discounts and annual commitments are available through sales but not quantified publicly.
Pros & cons
What works
- +300ms p99 latency with 99.99% uptime SLA for enterprise workloads
- +Search API includes News endpoint at no extra cost up to 100 results per call
- +SOC 2 certified with zero-data-retention and DPA-ready enterprise contracts
- +Python SDK, REST API, and MCP Server support for flexible integration
- +Research API cites sources inline using AAAI Best Paper Award methodology
What doesn't
- −No perpetual free tier; $100 trial credit expires with no published renewal path
- −Research API tier pricing beyond Lite is opaque (Standard/Deep/Exhaustive/Frontier not listed)
- −Finance Research API starts at $110 per 1k calls, making it expensive for high-volume use
- −No explicit mention of streaming or webhook support in the provided documentation
Best use cases
AI agent startups
Perfect fitYou.com's cited Research API and low-latency Search API directly address the need for grounded, real-time web data in autonomous agent loops.
Fintech and investment research teams
Perfect fitThe Finance Research API is purpose-built for filings and macro data, offering traceable citations that reduce compliance risk.
Mid-market SaaS adding RAG features
Good fitThe Contents API and Search API provide clean data extraction, though per-call costs require careful budgeting as user scale grows.
Solo developers on tight budgets
Mixed fitWhile the $100 credit lowers the barrier, ongoing usage-based pricing without a free tier makes long-term costs unpredictable for side projects.
News aggregation platforms
Good fitDedicated News endpoint and 10M+ sources indexed make it a strong fit, though competitors may offer cheaper per-query rates.
Who should skip You.com
Honest no-go cases — save your trial period.
- →Hobbyists or students needing a permanent free search API without usage anxiety
- →Teams requiring simple site scraping where basic crawlers or curl suffice
- →Buyers who need fully transparent, self-serve pricing for all Research API depth tiers
- →Non-financial applications with tight margins that might accidentally trigger expensive Finance API calls
Alternatives to consider
- Brave Search API
Pick Brave when you need a privacy-focused, affordable general web search API with a generous free tier for small projects.
Skip Brave if you require deep multi-step research synthesis or specialized financial intelligence with inline citations.
- SerpApi
Pick SerpApi when you need structured Google, Bing, and other engine results with rich SERP features and mature documentation.
Skip SerpApi if you need LLM-ready snippets, cited research synthesis, or finance-specific data pipelines out of the box.
- Exa
Pick Exa when you want neural search with semantic similarity and content summaries optimized for AI applications.
Skip Exa if you require traditional keyword search with country/language filters or a dedicated finance research endpoint.
vs You.com
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free tier or just a trial credit?
You.com does not offer a perpetual free tier. New accounts receive $100 in free credits to evaluate the APIs before moving to pay-as-you-go billing.
What is the difference between the Search API and the Research API?
The Search API returns up to 100 ranked web results with snippets and metadata for a given query. The Research API performs multi-step search and synthesis to generate a cited, paragraph-length answer with inline source references.
Does the Finance Research API require separate infrastructure or data feeds?
No. You.com states the Finance Research API requires no infrastructure on your end; it handles filings, macro data, and market sources internally and returns reconciled, cited answers.
What formats does the Contents API return?
The Contents API returns full-page content in either clean Markdown or raw HTML per URL, and it supports batch requests for multiple pages in a single call.
How does You.com handle data privacy and retention?
You.com is SOC 2 certified and offers zero-data-retention options, allowing all queries and data to be automatically purged. It is also DPA-ready for enterprise contracts.
Are there volume discounts or annual pricing options?
Yes. You.com offers volume discounts as usage scales and deeper discounts for annual commitments, though specific rates require discussion with the sales team.
What SDKs and protocols are supported?
You.com provides a Python SDK, a REST API, and an MCP Server, enabling integration into most modern agent and application stacks.
How many results can I get per Search API call?
Each Search API call can return between 1 and 100 results, including titles, URLs, and LLM-ready contextual snippets.
The bottom line
You.com is a strong choice for engineering teams building agentic applications that require reliable, low-latency web grounding and citation-backed research. The Search API is competitively priced at $5 per 1,000 calls, and the Research API's tiered depth gives flexibility for simple lookups or exhaustive synthesis. Enterprises in regulated industries will appreciate the SOC 2 certification, zero-data-retention options, and DPA-ready status.
However, small teams and hobbyists should think carefully. There is no perpetual free tier beyond the initial $100 credit, and the Finance Research API's $110 per 1,000 calls can make high-volume financial workflows expensive quickly. Additionally, the lack of public pricing for Standard, Deep, Exhaustive, and Frontier research tiers forces buyers into sales conversations before they can model costs accurately.
We would raise our rating if You.com published transparent pricing for all Research tiers, introduced a sustained free tier for low-volume developers, and expanded documentation around streaming or async webhook patterns. Until then, it remains a premium, enterprise-leaning solution best suited to well-funded AI startups and established companies with clear search-API budgets.