SYFTLY/ answers
light estimateLast updated 2026-08-20

Brave Software vs Linkup

Brave Search API (Data for AI) vs Linkup for web search. Free/mo: 1000 vs 4000 — edge Linkup Computed from public benchmarks with dated sources; updated 2026-08-20.

Head to head
Brave Search API (Data for AI) compared with Linkup per decision axis
AxisBrave Search API (Data for AI)LinkupEdge
Price$5 per 1000 queries$5 per 1000 queries—
Relevance14.89——
Latency669 ms——
Free/mo10004000Linkup
LLM-ready—✓—
Strengths & caveats
Brave SoftwareOwns an independent index (not a Google reseller) and topped the one independent agent-search eval covering it on both relevance (14.89/best) and lowest measured latency (669ms). Returns SERP-style results that need extraction for LLM use rather than clean ready-to-ground content; free tier was cut to a $5 monthly credit in Feb 2026.LinkupLow entry price for standard search ($5/1k raw results, $6/1k with a sourced answer), clean LLM-ready output, and a recurring $20 monthly credit worth about 4000 standard queries. Deep search is 10x the standard price ($50/1k raw, $55/1k sourced), so the cheap entry price only holds for standard queries; not covered by the one independent multi-provider eval available, so its relevance/latency rank is unverified; its top SimpleQA claims are vendor self-reported (Tier 3) and conflict with rival self-reports.
Sources