# Linkup review (2026): is the free plan enough? > Pay-per-request web search and fetch API for AI agents Checked Nov 12, 2026 ยท graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA. Linkup is an API that gives AI agents and applications web search, page fetching and asynchronous deep research. It bills each successful request against a prepaid account balance instead of selling monthly plans, and it publishes the per-request price of every endpoint and depth setting. - **Category:** SERP & SEO Data APIs - **Made by:** Linkup - **Website:** https://www.linkup.so - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Not for you if you want a fixed monthly bill, since spend follows usage. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 12, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 12, 2026, Linkup has a free plan. - **Pricing model:** Free plan - **Free plan:** New accounts with a professional email get $20 of credit, topped back up to $20 each month for eligible accounts. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Free credit | $0 | $20 of credit on sign-up with a professional email; docs say eligible accounts are topped back up to $20 monthly. | | Enterprise | Custom | Custom pricing, private environment, SOC 2 Type II, zero-data retention, SLA and dedicated support. | Read from https://www.linkup.so/pricing on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Linkup before buying. ## Ways to pay less - **$5,000 in free credits for startups** (Startups): The pricing page invites startups to apply for $5,000 in free credits. Source: https://www.linkup.so/pricing ## Key features - **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. ## Good for - Developers who want to pay per request with no subscription - AI agents that need search, fetch and research behind one API - Teams moving off another search API, with docs on migrating from Tavily, Exa and SerpAPI ## Worth knowing - 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. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.4 out of 4**, graded Nov 12, 2026. Linkup is a web search API for AI agents with sourced answers, a fetch endpoint and a research endpoint. There is no monthly plan, so you pay per call from a prepaid balance, and the free $20 credit needs a professional email. - **Value for money: C.** Pay per call from a prepaid balance at about $0.005 a search, with no flat plan to compare with this category's $19 to $44. - **Free plan and trial: B.** $20 of credit on sign-up, topped back up to $20 each month for eligible accounts, about 4,000 searches. One person could live on that. - **Features: C.** Search, sourced answers, fetch and research endpoints. Zero data retention is only on the Enterprise plan. - **Ease of use: C.** No store rating on record. It is an API with a key and code to write. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web only, but it lists LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, Vercel AI SDK, Composio, Hugging Face and Agno. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Linkup's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among SERP and SEO data APIs - Linkup's GPA of 2.4 is higher than 21 of the 48 other SERP and SEO data APIs we grade, and level with 17. - It stands best on free plan and trial (B, above 43 of 48) and worst on features (C, above 1). The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/seo-data-apis ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Linkup you would be making search results fetched at scale from many countries without being blocked. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. - You could not: Search results fetched at scale from many countries without being blocked. - You could not: A search engine with an AI model behind it. - You could not: A library of papers and sources to search. - You could not: An AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it. - You could not: It plugs into other products, LangChain, LlamaIndex and CrewAI among them, and has an API. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, Vercel AI SDK, Composio, Hugging Face, Agno **Tags:** SERP API, AI search, Research, Public API, AI agents ## Alternatives - [Tavily](https://toolgpa.com/tools/tavily): Web search, extract and crawl API built for AI agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/linkup-vs-tavily) - [Firecrawl](https://toolgpa.com/tools/firecrawl): Web search, scrape and crawl API that returns LLM-ready data. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/firecrawl-vs-linkup) - [Brave Search API](https://toolgpa.com/tools/brave-search-api): Web search API from Brave's own index, built for AI agents and apps. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/brave-search-api-vs-linkup) - [Serper](https://toolgpa.com/tools/serper): Google search results API sold in prepaid credit packs. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/linkup-vs-serper) - [DataForSEO](https://toolgpa.com/tools/dataforseo): Pay-as-you-go APIs for SERP, keyword, backlink and AI mention data. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/dataforseo-vs-linkup) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026: - https://www.linkup.so/pricing - https://www.linkup.so - https://www.linkup.so/about - https://docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/platform/pricing - https://docs.linkup.so/llms.txt Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/linkup Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).