Linkup
A web search API for AI agents that returns cited answers with enterprise-grade accuracy, speed, and compliance.
Linkup is the accuracy-first choice for enterprises that can't tolerate hallucinations. Private index and BYOC deployment are real advantages for regulated industries, and the published benchmarks make it easier to justify. Skip it if you need semantic discovery—Exa owns that space. For deep research API needs, Linkup is a credible alternative to OpenAI and Gemini, and its transparent benchmarking is unique among major providers.
Verified 8d ago · liveness 79/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/linkup
- Enterprise AI applications that need high factual accuracy and compliance
- Legal AI platforms requiring production-grade web search
- Research copilots performing in-depth, multi-step research queries
- Sales agent systems using real-time web intent data
- Small hobby projects on a tight budget (no free tier after the initial 4,000 queries)
- Applications needing semantic similarity or discovery — Exa is the better fit
- Teams wanting a single, simple search API without learning multiple endpoints
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Skip Linkup if you need semantic discovery like Exa offers, or if you're on a tight budget and can't justify pay-as-you-go pricing after 4,000 free queries.
Fetch costs $0.001-$0.006 per request, which can add up quickly for frequent URL scraping.
Linkup's pay-as-you-go pricing is flexible for enterprises that need accurate, grounded web search. It's costlier than Tavily's free tier, but the accuracy and compliance features justify the premium for regulated industries.
In short
Linkup — A web search API for AI agents that returns cited answers with enterprise-grade accuracy, speed, and compliance. Best for Enterprise AI applications that need high factual accuracy and compliance, Legal AI platforms requiring production-grade web search, Research copilots performing in-depth, multi-step research queries. Free to use.
What's new in Linkup
Checked 8 days agoAcross the latest 4 updates: 4 news mentions.
Real-time grounding for enterprise AI agents: the 2026 buyer's checklist
A checklist for evaluating web search APIs on freshness, source diversity, latency, compliance, and accuracy.
Linkup vs. Perplexity Sonar API alternative for RAG: accuracy, citations, and compliance compared
Positions Linkup as an alternative to Perplexity Sonar API with raw cited sources and zero data retention.
How we crawl the web for AI search
Details on Linkup's crawler, Mercator, turning the open web into navigable data for AI search.
Inside H Company's Computer-Use Agents: Web Search at Production Scale with Linkup
Case study: H Company integrates Linkup into all agents for web search at production scale.
What people actually say about Linkup — is it worth it?
We scanned public community sources for Linkup on Aug 30, 2026 and could not establish that the discussion we found is about this tool rather than something else sharing its name. Our own analysis of that scan says the posts were off-subject. Rather than publish a sentiment score built on the wrong subject, we publish nothing here and re-run the scan.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Linkup? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: September 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Fetch endpoint: retrieve web page content in <2 seconds
- Search endpoint: sub-second results, standard and deep modes (1-3s)
- Research endpoint: asynchronous deep research (1-10 minutes)
- Full-text snippets from trusted sources
- Configurable source selection and freshness controls
- Private index deployment for proprietary data
- Bring your own cloud (BYOC) deployment
- 99.9% uptime SLA
- 92% F-score on Verified SimpleQA
- 61% SealQA-0 score on deep research
- OpenAI SDK wrapper integration
- LangChain integration
- CrewAI integration
- GDPR compliant architecture
- SOC 2 Type II on all plans
About Linkup
Linkup is a production-grade web search API engineered for AI applications that need fast, accurate, and grounded answers. It targets teams shipping legal AI, research copilots, sales agents, and voice systems. The API offers three endpoints: Fetch extracts web page content in under 2 seconds, Search delivers sub-second results in standard and deep modes, and Research handles asynchronous deep research taking 1-10 minutes. This lets you match the right tool to the job, from a quick fact check to a multi-step research agent. Linkup reports a 92% F-score on the Verified SimpleQA benchmark, which measures factual accuracy for search-augmented systems on web-grounded questions. It also publishes a SealQA-0 deep research score of 61%. For teams comparing accuracy claims, Linkup says it is the only provider among OpenAI, Gemini, and SerpAPI that publishes reproducible benchmarks. That transparency helps enterprises whose compliance teams demand evidence before production. Deployment flexibility is a differentiator. Linkup offers a private index for controlled access to proprietary data, and bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) so the full indexing layer runs inside your infrastructure. This matters for regulated industries like finance and government. The platform is GDPR compliant, SOC 2 Type II on all plans, and ZDR is available with the Enterprise plan. The 99.9% uptime SLA is backed by enterprise agreements. Pricing is pay-as-you-go with 4,000 free queries to start. Fetch costs $0.001-$0.006 per request, Search $0.005-$0.006, and Research $0.25-$2.50. The API integrates with LangChain, CrewAI, and an OpenAI SDK wrapper, so you can drop it into an existing stack with one line of code. Recent updates highlight integration with H Company's computer-use agents and SambaNova LLMs, expanding its reach in the AI agent landscape. Linkup is a strong alternative to Tavily and SerpAPI for enterprise buyers prioritizing accuracy and compliance over semantic discovery.
Behind the Verdict
Linkup positions itself as the web search API for AI agents that need grounded, cited answers. Its core strength is accuracy: benchmark scores of 92% on Verified SimpleQA and 61% on SealQA-0 are published, alongside reproducible methodologies—a rarity among competitors. This transparency is a practical benefit for enterprise teams that must justify tool choices to compliance boards. The three-endpoint design (Fetch, Search, Research) is a thoughtful match for different latency/accuracy tradeoffs. Fetch gives you instant page retrieval, Search balances speed and depth, and Research handles multi-step queries that need minutes. This flexibility means you can tune your stack to the job, rather than overpaying for a one-size-fits-all approach. Deployment options are a differentiator for regulated industries. Private Index and BYOC let you keep proprietary data inside your walls, which is critical for finance, government, and legal sectors. The 99.9% uptime SLA and SOC 2 Type II certification on all plans add to the enterprise readiness. Where Linkup falls short is semantic discovery. If you need to find conceptually related content beyond exact keywords, Exa is a better fit. Also, the Research endpoint's asynchronous nature may not suit real-time needs, and the free tier's 4,000-query limit is modest for anything beyond prototyping. Overall, Linkup is a solid choice for teams that prioritize factual accuracy and compliance over cost or semantic flexibility. It's an especially strong alternative to Tavily and SerpAPI for enterprise-scale AI agents.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Linkup actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Integrate Linkup into a legal research copilot to fetch cited case law and statutes.
Outcome: Provides accurate, cited answers in seconds, enabling faster document review and due diligence.
Enrich CRM records with live company intelligence using Search endpoint.
Outcome: Improves lead scoring and personalization with real-time web signals, boosting conversion rates.
Power a voice agent with real-time web search for product queries.
Outcome: Delivers instant, grounded responses, enhancing user trust and engagement.
Use Cases
- Build a real-time AI copilot that answers complex technical questions with up-to-date web data.
- Enrich CRM and lead generation workflows with corporate intelligence from LinkedIn and premium sources.
- Automate invoice recovery by researching debtor information and drafting tailored messages.
- Create a research assistant that retrieves in-depth, cited analysis for legal or financial domains.
- Power a voice agent that searches the web for live information on products, services, or events.
- Run agentic corporate reputation monitoring with live web context.
- Provide secure enterprise AI search for regulated industries like railway operations.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-08-30
Limitations
- The Research endpoint runs asynchronously with 1-10 minute latency, which may not suit real-time needs.
- Advanced features like private index deployment and custom freshness controls likely require a custom plan.
- The initial free limit of 4,000 queries means production usage requires paid plans.
as of 2026-08-30
Verification history
We have re-verified Linkup 18 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 18 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Linkup tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0/mo
Ideal for
Developers evaluating Linkup for prototyping or small projects with up to 4,000 queries.
What this tier adds
Includes 4,000 free queries, access to all three endpoints, and SOC 2 Type II compliance. No cost to start.
Pay-as-you-go
Usage-based
Ideal for
Production teams needing flexible scaling with usage-based pricing, suitable for startups and mid-sized companies.
What this tier adds
Pay per request with Fetch at $0.001-$0.006, Search at $0.005-$0.006, Research at $0.25-$2.50. No base fee or commitment.
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Large enterprises and regulated industries requiring custom pricing, private index, and full compliance controls.
What this tier adds
Adds custom pricing models, private index deployment, BYOC, dedicated refresh rates, IP whitelisting, ZDR, SLA, and dedicated support.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Linkup's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Linkup's pay-as-you-go pricing is flexible for enterprises that need accurate, grounded web search. It's costlier than Tavily's free tier, but the accuracy and compliance features justify the premium for regulated industries.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Linkup — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Linkup can be integrated in about 15 minutes using the OpenAI SDK wrapper. You'll get your first search result within minutes. For enterprise deployment with private index or BYOC, expect a few days to set up the infrastructure and configure compliance controls.
Switching to or from Linkup
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Tavily: Replace your existing search API calls with Linkup's endpoints; adjust to the three-endpoint model for better accuracy.
- →From SerpAPI: Map SerpAPI's response format to Linkup's searchResults output; use Fetch for full-page extraction.
- →From OpenAI web search: Swap the OpenAI SDK's search tool with Linkup's OpenAI-compatible wrapper for a drop-in replacement.
- ↗To Exa: Switch to Exa if you need semantic discovery and neural search capabilities.
- ↗To Perplexity Sonar API: Consider Perplexity for a generative answer format, but note Linkup offers raw cited sources and ZDR.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
Official links
Tools that pair well with Linkup
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Linkup, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Alternatives to Linkup
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AI-native company research API with cited results, built for agents and GTM teams.
Mixedbread AI
Multimodal search & retrieval API for AI agents in 100+ languages
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