Parallel Search API vs Linkup: excerpts sized for agents or sourced answers under EU terms
Parallel Search API is a search API built for AI agents that takes a natural-language objective and returns ranked URLs with compressed excerpts. Linkup is a web search API for AI that returns ranked URLs, a sourced answer, or structured JSON.
The short answer
- Parallel Search API: Token-efficient excerpts for agent tool calls, with fast low-cost modes and a free keyless MCP.
- Linkup: Grounding answers with sources under European (EU) legal terms, with a cheap standard tier.
Side by side
| Parallel Search API | Linkup | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Parallel's own web index (it says billions of pages, millions added daily). | Linkup's own index of the web (it offers to run the full index inside a customer's cloud). |
| Returns | JSON results with URL, title, publish date and LLM-ready excerpts (dense snippets or full page markdown). | Ranked search results, or a sourced answer, or structured JSON to a schema you supply. |
| Before the first call | An account and an API key (x-api-key header); the Search MCP works without a key at lower limits. | A free account and API key; or pay per request in USDC via x402 with no account. |
| Free | Up to 5,000 requests a month free ($5 in free credits a month), plus up to $80 at signup. | $20 credit at sign-up with a professional email, topped back up to $20 each month for eligible accounts (about 4,000 standard searches). |
| Paid | $0.001 to $0.005 a request for 10 results. | $0.005 a standard search; $0.05 a deep search. |
| Acting on a result | Through the web page each result links to | Through the web page each result links to |
| Limits on keeping or showing results | Outputs may not be copied, cached, stored or reused from previous queries for future uses (beyond what the terms allow). | Open web content may be kept only as long as needed for text-and-data-mining purposes (EU exception). |
| AI in its terms | You may not use outputs to create synthetic training data for a language model; Parallel may use customer inputs and outputs to train its own models. | Answers are for internal use only, not for resale or acting as a wrapper of the API; Linkup may use client data, including prompts, to train its service. |
| MCP server | Official Search MCP: https://search.parallel.ai/mcp (free, no API key needed) | Official MCP server: https://mcp.linkup.so/mcp (code: https://github.com/LinkupPlatform/linkup-mcp-server) |
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use Parallel Search API?
An account and an API key (x-api-key header); the Search MCP works without a key at lower limits.
Is Parallel Search API free?
Up to 5,000 requests a month free ($5 in free credits a month), plus up to $80 at signup.
What do I need before I can use Linkup?
A free account and API key; or pay per request in USDC via x402 with no account.
Is Linkup free?
$20 credit at sign-up with a professional email, topped back up to $20 each month for eligible accounts (about 4,000 standard searches).
Sources
Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.
Parallel Search API, read on October 15, 2026:
- parallel.ai/pricing: “Run up to 5,000 requests per month for free”
- parallel.ai/pricing: “Earn up to $80 at signup + $5 in free credits per month”
- parallel.ai/products/search: “Billions of pages covering the full depth and breadth of the public web”
- docs.parallel.ai/search/search-quickstart: “takes a natural language objective and returns relevant excerpts optimized for LLMs”
- parallel.ai/customer-terms: “shall not copy, cache, or store any significant portion of any Customer Output”
- parallel.ai/customer-terms: “making available Customer Outputs from previous queries for future uses”
- parallel.ai/customer-terms: “create synthetic training data to develop or train a language model”
- parallel.ai/customer-terms: “Parallel may use Customer IP to train and improve the machine learning and other artificial intelligence models”
- docs.parallel.ai/integrations/mcp/search-mcp: “https://search.parallel.ai/mcp”
- parallel.ai/pricing: “$0.001 - $0.005 for 10 results”
Linkup, read on October 15, 2026:
- docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/development/pricing: “We will top up eligible accounts back to $20 each month.”
- docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/development/pricing: “When you first sign up with a professional email address, your account is automatically credited with $20.”
- linkup.so/pricing: “Run 4,000 queries for free.”
- docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/get-started/introduction: “Query → ranked URLs, sourced answer, or structured JSON”
- docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/get-started/introduction: “the full Linkup index runs inside your VPC and queries never leave your environment”
- docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/development/authentication: “pay per request in USDC, no account needed”
- linkup.so/terms-of-use: “retain Open Web Content for as long as is necessary for the purposes of text and data mining only”
- linkup.so/terms-of-use: “acting as a wrapper of the Linkup APIs”
- linkup.so/terms-of-use: “training and improving the Linkup Solution”
- docs.linkup.so/pages/integrations/mcp/mcp: “https://mcp.linkup.so/mcp”
- docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/development/pricing: “"flash" / "fast" / "standard" "searchResults" $0.005”
- docs.linkup.so/pages/documentation/development/pricing: “"deep" "searchResults" $0.05”