Alternatives
Linkup alternatives
A French grounding API returning structured, citation-carrying content for LLMs, with a sub-second "fast" tier and native parallel search.
Verified 7 October 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
- $5
- Free tier
- $20 of credit, topped back up to $20 each month for eligible accounts (about 4,000 standard searches)
- Rate limit
- 10 queries / sec per organisation
- MCP server
- Yes
- Graph traversal
- No
- Coverage transparency
- No
- Funding
- $10M+
- Investors
- Gradient, Elaia, Seedcamp, Axeleo Capital, Motier Ventures
Pricing detail. $5 per 1,000 standard-depth searches returning results ($0.005 a call); $6 per 1,000 with a sourced answer, and $50 per 1,000 at deep depth.
Why teams look for a Linkup alternative
The usual reason is cost predictability. Linkup does not publish a flat per-1,000 search rate, which makes forecasting a large workload harder than it should be and makes a like-for-like comparison against providers that do publish one impossible without running both.
The second is the index question. Linkup operates its own retrieval layer over partner and web sources rather than a fully independent index, so the dependency is one step removed rather than absent. For a team whose lesson from the last two years was to check what sits underneath a provider, that is the thing they come to check.
Where Linkup beats us
The sub-second tier and native parallel search are genuine engineering, and for an interactive product where a user is waiting, latency at the API is the specification that matters most. They are also independently funded and European-headquartered, which for some buyers is a data-residency and jurisdiction argument rather than a preference — and that is a requirement we cannot argue our way around.
Every page in this section names this. A comparison that cannot say where the other product wins is an advertisement.
The alternatives
unlob
$0.40/1kWe own the index the answers come from rather than layering over an upstream provider, so there is nobody above us who can change terms. Like a retrieval layer we return model-ready passages with citations; unlike one, we can tell you why a URL is absent, because we hold the ledger that records it.
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.
Perplexity
$1/1kRaw web search over its own index through the Search API, and search with synthesis through the Agent API, which replaced Sonar Chat Completions in September 2026.
Bright Data
$1.50/1kProxy and unblocking infrastructure with a scraping suite and an agent-facing MCP server. Built for volume collection, priced accordingly.
Exa
$4/1kNeural, embeddings-first search over a proprietary index, sold alongside content extraction, answers and agentic research products.
Sources
- Linkup pricingread 7 October 2026
- Linkup pricing documentationread 7 October 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 searches against $5 for Linkup's standard-depth search. 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?
$5 per 1,000 standard-depth searches returning results ($0.005 a call); $6 per 1,000 with a sourced answer, and $50 per 1,000 at deep depth.
Try the cheapest own-index alternative
10,000 free credits a month, no card. Test coverage and latency against your own queries before you commit to anything.