Linkup alternatives
A French grounding API returning structured, citation-carrying content for LLMs, with a sub-second "fast" tier and native parallel search.
Verified 5 August 2026·Figures from vendors' own pages
Linkup at a glance
- Vendor
- Linkup
- Category
- Retrieval layers
- Own index
- Partial — Own retrieval layer over partner and web sources
- Price per 1,000
- Not published as a flat rate
- Free tier
- Free developer credits on signup
- MCP server
- Yes
- Graph traversal
- No
- Coverage transparency
- No
- Funding
- $10M+
- Investors
- Gradient, Elaia, Seedcamp, Axeleo Capital, Motier Ventures
Pricing detail. Priced per plan and per search depth rather than a single public per-1,000 rate.
The alternatives
unlob
$0.40/1kOur own index, admitted rather than ranked. Metadata-only passage hits, six coverage-graph traversal tools, an MCP server, and an endpoint that tells you why any URL is or is not in the index. Smaller than the well-funded incumbents, and considerably cheaper than all of them.
Tavily
$8/1kAn LLM-shaped retrieval layer returning cleaned, ranked, cited chunks rather than raw SERPs. Acquired by Nebius in February 2026.
Acquired by Nebius Group for $275M, February 2026
Valyu
A London deep-search API spanning web plus licensed proprietary sources, with content attribution and pay-per-use monetisation for publishers.
DataForSEO
$0.60/1kIndustrial SERP infrastructure built for SEO tooling rather than agents. The cheapest per query in the field, with the lowest-level API to match.
Parallel Search
$1/1kA suite of web search, extraction and research APIs on a proprietary index, from the former Twitter CEO. The closest competitor to unlob by thesis.
Serper
$1/1kThe cheapest way to get raw Google results into an agent. Fast, minimal, and entirely dependent on Google continuing to be scrapeable.
Brave Search API
$5/1kA genuinely independent index of 40B+ pages, sold as a conventional search API with an LLM-context option. Long the default independent choice.
Free developer tier removed February 2026
Google Custom Search JSON API
$5/1kGoogle's own programmable search endpoint. Real Google results, a hard 10,000/day ceiling, and terms written for site search rather than agents.
Exa
$7/1kNeural, embeddings-first search over a proprietary index, sold alongside content extraction, answers and agentic research products.
Sources
- Linkupread 5 August 2026
- Linkup raises $10M seedread 5 August 2026
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Linkup?
It depends what you are replacing. If you need an independent index at the lowest price, unlob is $0.40 per 1,000 queries. If you need the largest possible index, Linkup may still be the right tool — we say so on our comparison page rather than pretending otherwise.
Does Linkup own its own web index?
Partly — Own retrieval layer over partner and web sources. It operates its own retrieval layer but is not a fully independent web index.
How much does Linkup cost?
Priced per plan and per search depth rather than a single public per-1,000 rate.
Try the cheapest own-index alternative
10,000 free requests a month, no card. Test coverage and latency against your own queries before you commit to anything.