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Verified Oct 16, 2026

You.com

Verified Oct 16, 2026 Active
AI Search & Answer EnginesWrite a reviewUnited StatesEffect71/ 100
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Web search, content extraction and research APIs for grounding AI agents, with a sign-in chat product kept behind the front door.

answer engineweb searchsearch apiresearchFreemium · from $0.005/request

Listed on EffectHub ·

Web · API
Screenshot of the You.com website
#3154
you.com as we captured it — our own screenshot, not the vendor’s press image.

Pricing

Pricing model
Freemium
Paid options from
$0.005/request
Billing
Metered · per request

Pay as you go with no minimums, seats or platform fee: Web Search $5 per 1,000 calls, Contents $1 per 1,000 pages, Answer $5 per 1,000, Research from $12 (Lite) to $1,200 (Frontier) per 1,000, Finance Research $110 and $500 per 1,000. Free: 100 Web Search queries a day through MCP without a key, and a $10 credit on signup; Enterprise is custom. No consumer subscription price is public.

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Overview

About You.com

You.com now presents itself as a real-time web data layer for AI rather than a consumer search engine. Its public surface is a set of APIs: Web Search, Contents for page extraction, Answer for cited responses, Research in five depths from Lite to a background-only Frontier mode, and a Finance Research variant, plus an MCP server that allows 100 searches a day with no key or account. The site publishes benchmark results on SimpleQA, FRAMES, DeepSearchQA and FinSearchComp and sells enterprise terms with zero data retention, SOC 2 and dedicated capacity. The chat product that consumers knew still exists but sits behind sign-in with no public plans page. The company is SuSea, Inc., trading as You.com, in Palo Alto, founded by Richard Socher.

Platforms
Web · API
API
Yes
Last verified
Oct 16, 2026

Verified sources

  • Pricing page: Web Search $5 per 1k calls, Contents $1 per 1k pages, Answer $5 per 1k, Research Lite $12 to Frontier $1,200 per 1k, Finance Research $110 and $500 per 1k; Free tier of 100 MCP queries a day with no key; $10 free credit; pay as you go with no minimums; Enterprise custom (15 October 2026)you.com ↗
  • Homepage positions You.com as 'The Real-Time Web Data Layer for AI' with Web Search, Contents, Answer, Research and Finance Research APIs, an MCP server and benchmark results, and no consumer chat or apps mentioned (15 October 2026)you.com ↗
  • Terms name SuSea, Inc., d/b/a you.com, 228 Hamilton Ave, Floor 3, Palo Alto, CA 94301, under California law; last updated 27 August 2024 (15 October 2026)you.com ↗
  • About page names Richard Socher as CEO and founder and frames the company around web search APIs for AI and enterprise tools (15 October 2026)you.com ↗
  • /plans returns 404 and /chat redirects to /signin (15 October 2026)you.com ↗
Fact check

Is You.com legit?

We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.

Domain registered
Nov 25, 1998 (27 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar Amazon Registrar, Inc., looked up Sep 6, 2026
TLS certificate
Issued by Google Trust Services, valid until Dec 12, 2026Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 16, 2026
Last checked
Oct 16, 2026The site answered
Operated by
SuSea, Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026

How we collect these records

Editorial verdict

Pros & cons of You.com

medium confidence

Treat You.com as an API vendor now: the homepage, pricing and about pages are all about search, extraction and research endpoints for agents, with a free MCP allowance that lets you try the index without an account. The per-call prices are plain and the research tiers go deep enough to replace a scraping pipeline, but the consumer chat that the brand was known for has retreated behind sign-in with no visible plan, so anyone arriving for a ChatGPT alternative should look at Perplexity instead.

Pros

  • 100 free Web Search queries a day via MCP with no key, account or card
  • Published per-1,000-call prices across search, contents, answer and research endpoints (15 October 2026)
  • Research tiers from Lite to Frontier cover quick lookups through background deep dives
  • Enterprise options with zero data retention, SOC 2 and custom QPS

Cons

  • The consumer chat product has no public plans page; /plans returns 404 and /chat redirects to sign-in
  • Deep research tiers are expensive per call and only make sense in volume
  • FAQ entries on credit expiry and volume discounts are present but empty on the pricing page
  • No desktop or mobile apps linked from the current site

Best for

  • Agent and RAG builders who need a live web index with citations through an API or MCP
  • Teams that want deep, multi-step research calls priced per request rather than per seat
  • Enterprises that need zero data retention and SOC 2 on their search layer

Not for

  • Consumers looking for a chat assistant with a published subscription; none is shown on the site
  • Low-budget hobby projects beyond the free MCP allowance, since Research calls cost $12 to $1,200 per thousand

Watch out: Catalogued here as a consumer answer engine with apps and a browser extension; today the site sells APIs, and the chat sits behind sign-in with no stated price, so do not recommend it as a consumer product without checking what the account actually offers after login.

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