Brave Search API vs Linkup (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Brave Search API if

• Fits if you're grounding an AI chatbot in current web results without scraping Google
• Works for apps moving off Google's Custom Search JSON API

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you need Google or Bing rankings, as results come only from Brave's index
• Watch out: a credit card is needed to sign up, even for the free monthly credit
• Watch out: storing results or training models on them needs a plan with storage rights
• Tight if you need volume, at 50 requests a second on Search and 2 on Answers before Enterprise
• Pricey if you use Answers, at $4 per 1,000 queries plus $5 per million tokens each way

Pick Linkup if

• Fits if an agent needs web search with sources attached
• Works for people who would rather pay per call than per month

Look elsewhere if

• Not for you if you want a fixed monthly bill, since spend follows usage
• Skip it if you have no work email, as the free credit asks for a professional one
• Watch out: zero data retention and the private environment are Enterprise only
• Watch out: the page says 4,000 free queries while the docs call it $20 of credit

Brave Search API

• Usage is billed from prepaid credits: Search is $5 per 1,000 requests, and Answers $4 per 1,000 queries plus $5 per million input and output tokens.
• Spellcheck and Autosuggest cost $5 per 10,000 requests, and storing results or training models on them needs a plan with storage rights.
• Results come only from Brave's index, so it does not report what ranks on Google or Bing.
• Capacity is 50 requests per second on Search and 2 on Answers; more needs an Enterprise agreement.

Linkup

• There is no monthly plan: each successful call draws down a prepaid balance, so spend follows usage.
• The pricing page says 'Run 4,000 queries for free'; the docs describe it as $20 of credit, which covers 4,000 searches at $0.005.
• Zero-data retention is offered only on the Enterprise plan; SOC 2 Type II is stated to be on all plans.
• It is a general web search API, not an SEO tool: it has no rank tracking or keyword data.

Brave Search API

Brave's own index

Every result comes from Brave's crawler and ranking, informed by opt-in signals from Brave users, with no fallback to Google or Bing for any query.

LLM Context endpoint

Returns ranked, extracted page content for a model to answer from, sized from 1k to about 33k tokens, with a relevance threshold and a URL and timestamp per source.

Web, news, image, video and places

The Search plan covers human-readable web results plus news, images, videos and location-aware places with map data, under one API key.

Goggles and richer results

Goggles rerank results and limit them to chosen sites; up to five extra snippets per result and schema-enriched results with added metadata.

Answers endpoint

Writes answers grounded on one or several searches, with citations and streaming, through an interface compatible with the OpenAI SDK.

Privacy and security

Brave says queries are never shared or used for training, retention is zero by design, and the service is SOC 2 Type II attested.

Linkup

Search endpoint

Web search for agent tool calls. Flash, fast and standard depths cost $0.005 a call and deep costs $0.05 for raw results.

Sourced answers and structured output

The search endpoint can return a sourced answer or output shaped to a schema, at $0.001 to $0.005 more than raw results.

Fetch endpoint

Gets a URL's content as Markdown, from $0.001 per call without JavaScript rendering up to $0.01 with pro mode and rendering.

Research endpoint

Asynchronous deep research billed by reasoning depth: $0.25 for S, $0.50 for M, $1.50 for L and $2.50 for XL.

Agent integrations

Docs cover an MCP server and guides for LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, the Vercel AI SDK and Composio.

Brave Search API

• Free monthly credits$0

  $5 of credit a month on each of Search, Answers, Spellcheck and Autosuggest; usage beyond it is drawn from prepaid credits.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Custom terms, capacity and endpoints, full-funnel zero data retention, NDAs, invoicing and enterprise support. Sold through sales.

Linkup

• Free credit$0

  $20 of credit on sign-up with a professional email; docs say eligible accounts are topped back up to $20 monthly.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Custom pricing, private environment, SOC 2 Type II, zero-data retention, SLA and dedicated support.

Brave Search API

No public discounts listed.

Linkup

• Startups

  $5,000 in free credits for startups

  The pricing page invites startups to apply for $5,000 in free credits.