Last updated: 2026-08-20
You.com's Research API ranks #1 on the DeepSearchQA benchmark at 83.67% accuracy, the highest publicly reported score for AI-agent web research as of 2026. You.com itself is a B2B search infrastructure provider: its APIs return citation-backed, structured web results built specifically for retrieval-augmented generation and autonomous AI agents, not for human browsing.
About You.com
You.com is an enterprise AI search infrastructure platform founded in 2020 by former Salesforce Chief Scientist Richard Socher and NLP researcher Bryan McCann. The company pivoted from a consumer search engine into a B2B API provider, raising a $199 million Series C in September 2025, and now counts DuckDuckGo, OpenAI, Databricks, and Amazon among its customers.
The platform ships five core APIs to enterprise developers, each billed independently so teams pay only for the endpoints they call. Beyond search, the underlying infrastructure also powers You.com's own consumer products, giving the API side of the business real production traffic to validate against.
Pricing
Web Search API costs $5 per 1,000 calls and the Contents API costs $1 per 1,000 pages fetched, both pay-as-you-go with no minimum spend. Research API pricing is usage-based and not published; contact sales for a rate. Consumer plans run $20 a month for Pro and $30 a month for Max, and Enterprise is custom-quoted.
| Tier | Monthly price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free API Tier | Free | $100 complimentary credits with account creation, usage-based after credits exhausted |
| Web Search API | Free | $5 per 1,000 API calls (flat rate regardless of result count, up to 100 results). No tiered pricing. |
| Contents API | Free | $1 per 1,000 pages fetched |
| Research API | Free | Usage-based pricing (rates not publicly disclosed, contact sales) |
| Enterprise | Free | Custom pricing based on volume, data retention requirements, and deployment scope |
| Consumer: Pro Plan | $20/mo | Fixed $20/month ($15/month annual billing) |
| Consumer: Max Plan | $30/mo | Fixed $30/month |
Key Features
- Research API: Scores 83.67% accuracy on the DeepSearchQA benchmark, the highest publicly reported result, with an adjustable research_effort parameter that trades off accuracy, latency, and compute cost for multi-step tasks.
- Web Search API: Returns up to 100 results per call as structured, LLM-ready JSON with live-page crawl and citation-backed snippets, plus freshness and geographic filtering.
- Contents API: Extracts full-page text, HTML, Markdown, and metadata from any URL in a single batch-capable call, built for constructing knowledge bases and RAG source libraries.
- Vertical Indexes: Curated, industry-specific search indexes for sectors like legal, finance, and healthcare, with customizable source selection and real-time data ingestion for enterprise deployments.
- AI Agent-Ready Architecture: Structured JSON responses support multi-step reasoning chains for autonomous agents, with a zero-data-retention option available for enterprise customers who cannot let queries persist.
- Platform Integrations: Native integrations with OpenAI as ChatGPT's core search provider, Databricks Unity Catalog, AWS Marketplace, LangChain, Zapier's 8,000+ app network, and the Model Context Protocol for agent tool use.
Pros
- Independently benchmarked as the most accurate research API publicly available, which matters most for teams that can't tolerate hallucinated citations in production.
- 99.99% uptime and roughly 300ms p99 latency make it usable directly in latency-sensitive, user-facing AI applications rather than just background jobs.
- Flat, transparent per-call pricing without a minimum spend removes the negotiation step that usually slows down evaluating an enterprise search vendor.
- Full source citations on every result let a team audit exactly why an AI system returned a given answer, instead of trusting a black box.
Cons
- API-first design means non-technical teams need an engineer to integrate it; there is no consumer-style search box for internal use.
- Enterprise pricing is quote-based rather than published, which adds a sales cycle for teams that want to budget in advance.
- Usage-based billing on the Research API means unpredictable per-query cost until you've run enough real queries to see a pattern.
- No offline or on-premises mode: every call needs outbound internet access, which rules it out for air-gapped environments.
Data Handling
- Compliance
- Enterprise-grade security · 99.99% uptime SLA · zero data retention option for enterprise customers
Frequently Asked Questions
What does You.com actually cost?
Contents API pricing is $1 per 1,000 pages, and Web Search API calls run $5 per 1,000, both billed only for what you use with no minimum spend. The Research API is priced by usage at a rate that isn't published, so you'd need to contact sales for that one. Consumer plans are $20 a month for Pro and $30 for Max, while Enterprise is quoted per deal.
Can you use You.com without paying?
Yes, through $100 in free API credits granted on signup rather than a permanent free plan. That's enough room to try the Search, Contents, and Research endpoints before any card is charged. Once the credits are gone, the account moves onto the same usage-based rates as everyone else, with no separate free-tier cap to hit.
What are You.com's closest competitors?
Exa is worth checking if you want a narrower, agent-focused neural search endpoint instead of a full API suite. Algolia fits better if the job is in-app product or site search rather than RAG grounding for an AI agent. Context.dev is the closer pick if all you need is site crawling and markdown extraction, without the search and research layer.
You.com or Exa: which should you pick?
It depends on the job. You.com packages separate search, content-extraction, news, image, and multi-step research endpoints under one account, while Exa is built around a single neural search endpoint used by over 400,000 developers. If you need the benchmarked Research API specifically, You.com is the only one of the two with that product; if you just need fast neural search for an agent, Exa's narrower focus may be simpler to integrate.
How do you get started with You.com?
Create an account, grab an API key from the dashboard, and call the REST endpoint directly, or drop in the official Python or JavaScript SDK to skip writing raw HTTP requests. Most builders have a working integration inside their first session, using the signup credits to run real queries before adding billing.
Top Alternatives
- Exa: Pick You.com if you want its benchmarked Research API alongside search, content, and news endpoints in one account; pick Exa if a narrower neural search API already serving 400,000+ developers covers your use case.
- Algolia: Pick You.com to ground an AI agent or RAG pipeline in live web results; pick Algolia for in-app product search, already running at 1.75 trillion queries a year across 18,000+ businesses.
- Context.dev: Pick You.com's Contents API if you want page extraction bundled with live search and news in one account; pick Context.dev if standalone crawling and brand-asset extraction, backed by 500 free credits, is the whole job.
HokAI guides covering You.com
- Best AI Search & Retrieval Infrastructure Tools in 2026: AI search and retrieval infrastructure is four purchases, not one: web search, document parsing, vector storage, and agent memory. Compare eight tools by layer.
- Algolia and You.com Both Call Themselves AI Search Infrastructure. They Aren't Rivals.: Algolia and You.com both market themselves as AI search infrastructure in 2026, but Algolia indexes data you own while You.com searches the live web for agents.
- Context.dev vs You.com: Which Should You Use in 2026?: Both now sell web search and page extraction in 2026. Context.dev bundles brand data for $25/month; You.com alone has a published search-accuracy benchmark.
- Andi Search Is Free for the Third Year Running. That's Not Entirely Reassuring.: Andi Search won its third straight PCMag award for staying completely free. Three years after promising a paid tier, here is what that bet means for you.