#1 You.com Alternative
Search, scrape, crawl, and map the web through one API, with JavaScript rendering and anti-bot handling in every 1-credit page. Ten search results with relevant passages cost $1.80 per 1,000 searches on Context.dev Pro and $5.00 on You.com, and on Scrapingbench an agent finished 38 of 40 scrape tasks with Context.dev against 29 with You.com.
1,000 agent searches, two ways
Context.dev Pro and You.com pay-as-you-go, October 2026 list prices
You.com bills a flat $5 per search call for up to 100 results and $1 per 1,000 pages it crawls live, with cached pages free, so its full-page search runs $5.00 to $15.00. At 100 results with passages, You.com ($5.00) costs less than Context.dev Pro ($18.00).
Powering agents and products with the world's data.
Why switch
You.com and Context.dev both give agents live web search with page content. You.com bills a flat $5 per search call and documents no anti-bot handling; Context.dev bills by the results you ask for, renders and unblocks every page for 1 credit, and adds crawl, map, batches, and page monitors.
- Key difference
Search with relevant passages for $1.80 per 1,000, not $5
Context.dev Web Search returns up to 100 ranked results and can add the passages that answer your query, read from every result page. Ten results with passages cost 2 credits, or $1.80 per 1,000 searches on Pro ($90/mo). You.com charges $5.00 per 1,000 calls with highlights included. Its price stays flat up to 100 results per call, so for large result sets You.com costs less: 100 results with passages are 20 credits on Context.dev ($18.00 per 1,000) against $5.00.
- Independent benchmark
95% of agent scrape tasks finished, against You.com’s 73%
On Scrapingbench, which gives every provider the same agent, model, and limits and checks each answer by script, the agent finished 38 of 40 scrape tasks with Context.dev and 29 with You.com. The site-clustered 95% range for that 22.5-point gap runs from 7.9 to 38.3 points. You.com was faster (3.6 s median per task against 4.6 s) and cheaper per finished task (1.00¢ against 1.36¢).
- Anti-bot
JavaScript rendering and anti-bot handling in every 1-credit scrape
You.com’s Contents API costs $1.00 per 1,000 pages and takes up to 10 URLs per request. Its docs suggest raising crawl_timeout to 20 to 30 seconds for JavaScript-heavy pages, list no proxy or anti-bot options, and return null content for pages behind a login wall. Context.dev renders JavaScript and runs managed proxies and anti-bot handling on every scrape, at $0.90 per 1,000 pages on Pro, with a proxy country per request and saved browser profiles for signed-in pages on paid plans.
- Extraction
Screenshots, images, and JSON from the same scrape
You.com Contents returns Markdown, HTML, and page metadata. Context.dev Scrape returns Markdown, rendered HTML, screenshots, images, and JSON against your schema for 5 credits, plus prebuilt parsers for Google Maps, app store and G2 reviews, and Instagram. PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files go through the same endpoint. On You.com, schema-shaped JSON comes from the Research API’s structured output, from $50 per 1,000 calls at standard effort.
- Scale
Crawl, map, and batch whole sites
You.com has no crawl or map endpoint, Contents takes 10 URLs per request, and self-serve keys default to 10 requests per second per endpoint. Context.dev crawls at 1 credit per page, maps a site’s URLs for 1 credit per call, and runs batches of up to 100,000 URLs with every Scrape output, failed pages refunded, and results kept for 180 days. Pro allows 100 concurrent requests and Scale allows 500.
- Interaction
Browser actions, saved logins, and page monitors
Run up to five browser actions per scrape (a natural-language step, scroll, wait, or wait for a selector) for 2 credits on paid plans, and reuse a saved browser profile for pages behind a login. Monitors re-check a page or sitemap for 1 credit per run, post changes to your webhook, and skip the charge when a run fails. You.com’s API has no browser actions, saved logins, or page monitors; its docs pair it with a separate cloud browser when a page needs interaction.
- Developer experience
Five SDKs, a CLI, and zero data retention on request
Context.dev ships TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP SDKs, a CLI, an MCP server, and a public OpenAPI spec. You.com maintains a Python SDK and an MCP server, and its docs mark the TypeScript SDK as deprecated in favor of plain fetch calls. Context.dev enables zero data retention per organization on request at no extra credits; You.com offers it on enterprise agreements.
What one request really costs
What 1,000 requests cost on Context.dev Pro and at You.com’s pay-as-you-go rates, by what you need back. You.com bills search per call whatever the result count; Context.dev bills per 10 results.
| Request | Context.dev | You.com | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search, 10 results with titles and snippetsNo page content | $0.90 (1 credit) | $5.00 | 5.6x more |
| Search, 10 results with relevant passagesContext.dev highlights; You.com highlights extraction | $1.80 (2 credits) | $5.00 | 2.8x more |
| Search, 100 results with relevant passagesYou.com’s price is flat up to 100 results | $18.00 (20 credits) | $5.00 | 3.6x less |
| Search, 10 results fetched live as MarkdownYou.com full page with fetch; cached pages are free | $9.90 (11 credits) | $15.00 | 1.5x more |
| Page by URL as Markdown or HTMLYou.com Contents API, 10 URLs per request | $0.90 | $1.00 | 1.1x more |
| Page behind bot protectionYou.com documents no proxy or anti-bot options | $0.90 | Not documented | Not documented |
| Crawl a site, per pageYou.com has no crawl endpoint | $0.90 | Not offered | Not offered |
| Sourced answer to a questionContext.dev Answers in fast mode; You.com Answer API | $9.00 (10 credits) | $5.00 | 1.8x less |
Derived from Context.dev Pro ($90 for 100,000 credits) at monthly billing and You.com’s pay-as-you-go list prices, which are the same on every self-serve account. You.com rates are from you.com/pricing and you.com/docs/administration/billing.
Full comparison
| Feature | Context.dev | You.com |
|---|---|---|
| Scraping & Crawling | ||
| Scrape to Markdown | Yes | Yes |
| Rendered HTML output | Yes | Yes |
| JavaScript rendering | Always included | Raise crawl_timeout |
| Managed proxies and anti-bot handling | Always included | Not documented |
| Screenshots | Yes | No |
| JSON extraction against your schema | 5 credits | Research API only |
| Prebuilt parsers for maps, app stores, reviews | Yes | No |
| Crawl a site | 1 credit/page | No |
| Map site URLs | 1 credit per call | No |
| Async batch scraping | Up to 100,000 URLs | Sync, 10 URLs a call |
| Change monitoring with webhooks | Yes | No |
| Parse PDFs and office documents | Yes | PDFs |
| Country geotargeting | Yes | Search ranking only |
| Signed-in scraping with saved logins | Browser profiles | No |
| Interaction & Search | ||
| Browser actions before capture | Up to 5 actions | No |
| Web search with page content | Yes | Yes |
| Results per search call | Up to 100 | Up to 100 |
| How search is billed | Per 10 results | Flat per call |
| 10 results with relevant passages | $1.80/1K on Pro | $5.00/1K |
| 100 results with relevant passages | $18.00/1K on Pro | $5.00/1K |
| 10 results fetched live as Markdown | $9.90/1K on Pro | $15.00/1K |
| Exact publish-date range filter | No | Yes |
| Domain include and exclude lists | Up to 100 each | Up to 5,000, plus boosts |
| Licensed market, sports, and weather data | No | Knowledge, no extra cost |
| Sourced answers | $9.00/1K on Pro | $5.00/1K |
| Multi-step research reports | Answers, fast or ultra | Five effort levels |
| Finance research on a financial index | No | Yes |
| Keyless search with no account | No | 100/day via MCP |
| Pricing & Billing | ||
| Billing model | Monthly credit plans | Prepaid balance |
| Failed scrapes free | Yes | Not stated |
| Free credits | 1,000 credits/mo | $100 once, 60 days |
| Rate limit on self-serve plans | 10 to 500 concurrent | 10 requests/second |
| Self-serve yearly billing | 2 months free | Through sales |
| Deployment | ||
| Managed API | Yes | Yes |
| Zero data retention | On request | Enterprise only |
| Developer Experience | ||
| Public OpenAPI spec | Yes | Yes |
| Python SDK | Yes | Yes |
| TypeScript SDK | Yes | Deprecated |
| Go, PHP, and Ruby SDKs | Yes | No |
| CLI | Yes | No |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes |
| Also Included: Brand & Company Data | ||
| Brand profile by domain, name, email, or ticker | Yes | No |
| Logo CDN for direct embedding (Logo Link) | Yes | No |
Cost per 1,000 pages
Public list prices on both sites, broken down to the cost of 1,000 pages at each tier. You.com charges the same pay-as-you-go rates on every self-serve account, so each row shows what the same spend buys there, with its search price alongside.
| Tier | Context.dev | You.com |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free $0/mo 1,000 credits 2 concurrent requests $0 per 1K pages, any page | Free credits $0 $10 at signup, $90 more after verifying 10 requests per second 100,000 pages once, within 60 days 20,000 searches once, within 60 days |
| Entry | Developer $20/mo 10,000 credits 10 concurrent requests $1.67–$2.00 per 1K pages, any page | Pay as you go $20 prepaid $20 of credits 10 requests per second $1.00 per 1K pages (Contents API) $5.00 per 1K searches, up to 100 results |
| Mid | Pro $90/mo 100,000 credits 100 concurrent requests $0.75–$0.90 per 1K pages, any page | Pay as you go $90 prepaid $90 of credits 10 requests per second $1.00 per 1K pages (Contents API) $5.00 per 1K searches, up to 100 results |
| Growth | Growth $300/mo 500,000 credits 250 concurrent requests $0.50–$0.60 per 1K pages, any page | Pay as you go $300 prepaid $300 of credits 10 requests per second $1.00 per 1K pages (Contents API) $5.00 per 1K searches, up to 100 results |
| High volume | Scale $500/mo 1,000,000 credits 500 concurrent requests $0.42–$0.50 per 1K pages, any page | Pay as you go $500 prepaid $500 of credits 10 requests per second $1.00 per 1K pages (Contents API) $5.00 per 1K searches, up to 100 results |
- Cost per 1,000 pages compares a 1-credit Context.dev scrape, where JavaScript rendering, managed proxies, and anti-bot handling are always on, with You.com’s Contents API at $1.00 per 1,000 pages. You.com’s docs list no proxy or anti-bot options and return null content for pages behind a login wall. Context.dev ranges run from yearly to monthly billing.
- You.com’s $1.00 Contents rate is below Context.dev Developer ($1.67–$2.00 per 1,000 pages), and its one-time free grant covers far more than 1,000 monthly credits. Context.dev costs less per page from Pro up ($0.75–$0.90). You.com search is a flat $5.00 per 1,000 calls for up to 100 results with highlights included, while Context.dev bills 1 credit per 10 results plus 1 per 10 for passages.
- You.com prices are from you.com/pricing and you.com/docs/administration/billing. Full-page content in search adds $1.00 per 1,000 pages crawled live, and cached pages are free. Signup credits ($10, plus $90 after verifying the account) last 60 days; purchased credits do not expire while the account is active.
- Rate limits are from you.com/docs/rate-limits: 10 requests per second per endpoint on self-serve accounts (5 for Finance Research), with higher limits on custom plans. You.com offers volume pricing through sales above 1 million calls a month.
Prices and plans checked on .
Which one fits
Both give agents live web search and page content. These are the cases where the choice is clear. For formats, pricing, and code, see the Context.dev web search API.
Choose Context.dev if
- Your agents read the pages behind the results, including JavaScript-heavy or bot-protected sites. On Scrapingbench, an agent finished 38 of 40 scrape tasks with Context.dev and 29 with You.com.
- You need more than Markdown: screenshots, images, JSON against your schema, prebuilt parsers, or PDFs and office files from the same 1-credit scrape.
- You process whole sites or long URL lists: crawl, map, batches of up to 100,000 URLs with failed pages refunded, and page monitors with webhooks.
- Your agents search at volume with about 10 results per call: passages cost $1.80 per 1,000 searches on Pro against $5.00 on You.com, with 100 concurrent requests.
Choose You.com if
- Latency is your constraint. You.com publishes a p50 of about 0.4 s for search, and on Scrapingbench its agent finished scrape tasks in 3.6 s median against 4.6 s.
- You pull many results per query or filter tightly: a flat $5.00 per 1,000 calls for up to 100 results with highlights, exact publish-date ranges, domain lists of up to 5,000 entries, and domain boosts.
- You want packaged research: the Answer API at $5.00 per 1,000, the Research API across five effort levels from $12 to $1,200 per 1,000, Finance Research on an index of filings and market data, and licensed Knowledge results in search.
- You prefer prepaid, pay-as-you-go billing: no minimums, purchased credits that do not expire while the account is active, $100 in signup credits, keyless MCP search for 100 queries a day, and pay-per-request machine payments.
A few things to know.
More details in the API documentation.
What is the best You.com alternative?
Context.dev is a You.com alternative for teams whose agents search the web and then read the pages. It covers the same core jobs (web search with passages or Markdown, page contents, and sourced answers) and adds JavaScript rendering and anti-bot handling in every 1-credit scrape, screenshots, JSON extraction against your schema, browser actions, crawl, map, page monitors, and batches of up to 100,000 URLs. If search latency, large result sets per call, or finance research matter most, You.com is the better fit.
How does You.com pricing compare to Context.dev?
You.com is pay-as-you-go: $5.00 per 1,000 Web Search calls for up to 100 results with highlights included, $1.00 per 1,000 pages crawled live for full-page content, $1.00 per 1,000 pages on the Contents API, and $5.00 per 1,000 Answer API calls. Context.dev bills credits from monthly plans: on Pro ($90 for 100,000 credits), 10 search results with passages cost $1.80 per 1,000 searches and a scrape costs $0.90 per 1,000 pages. You.com is cheaper for 100-result searches ($5.00 against $18.00) and for pages on Context.dev’s $20 Developer plan ($1.00 against $2.00).
How do Context.dev and You.com compare in independent benchmarks?
On Scrapingbench, which runs every provider with the same agent, model, and limits and checks answers by script, the agent finished 38 of 40 scrape tasks with Context.dev and 29 with You.com (95% against 73%), a 22.5-point gap with a site-clustered 95% range of 7.9 to 38.3 points. You.com was faster (3.6 s against 4.6 s median per task) and cheaper per finished task (1.00¢ against 1.36¢). The scrape track mostly tests documentation headings and structure.
Does Context.dev have a web search API like You.com?
Yes. POST /web/search returns 1 to 100 ranked results per call for 1 credit per 10 results, with country, language, freshness, and domain filters. Highlights, the passages that answer your query read from every result page, add 1 credit per 10 results, so 10 results with passages cost 2 credits ($1.80 per 1,000 searches on Pro). Full-page Markdown bills 1 credit per page, so 10 results with Markdown cost 11 credits ($9.90). You.com charges $5.00 per call whatever the result count, plus $1.00 per 1,000 pages crawled live for full pages, and adds exact date ranges, domain boosts, and licensed Knowledge results.
Can Context.dev read pages that You.com’s Contents API cannot?
Often, yes. Every Context.dev scrape renders JavaScript and runs managed proxies and anti-bot handling, with no option to turn them off and no extra credits. Paid plans add browser actions and saved browser profiles for pages behind a sign-in. You.com’s docs list no proxy or anti-bot options and return null content for pages behind a login wall. If every output of a Context.dev scrape fails there is no charge, except that a target 404 keeps the base credit.
Does Context.dev have an answer or research API like You.com?
Context.dev Answers researches the web and returns a sourced answer in the JSON shape you provide, for 10 credits in fast mode ($9.00 per 1,000 on Pro) or 100 in ultra mode. You.com’s Answer API costs less, at $5.00 per 1,000 calls. Its Research API runs five effort levels from $12 to $1,200 per 1,000 calls, and Finance Research searches an index of company fundamentals, prices, SEC filings, and financial news, which Context.dev does not offer.
Can I migrate from You.com to Context.dev?
Most calls map directly: /v1/search to POST /web/search (highlights extraction becomes highlightsOptions, full-page extraction becomes markdownOptions), /v1/contents to POST /web/scrape or a batch for long URL lists, and /v1/answer or /v1/research to POST /web/answers. Drop crawl_timeout tuning for JavaScript pages, since rendering is always on. Context.dev ships TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP SDKs, a CLI, and an MCP server. Finance Research, Knowledge results, the Inference Router, and machine payments have no Context.dev equivalent.
When is You.com the better choice?
Choose You.com when latency matters most: it publishes a search p50 of about 0.4 s, and on Scrapingbench its agent finished scrape tasks faster than with Context.dev, at a lower cost per finished task. It also costs less for large result sets (a flat $5.00 per 1,000 calls for up to 100 results), sourced answers ($5.00 against $9.00 per 1,000), and pages on small budgets ($1.00 per 1,000 against $2.00 on Developer). Pick it too for finance research, licensed Knowledge data, exact date ranges, or prepaid credits that do not expire.
More comparisons
Other search APIs that teams compare with Context.dev, or see every comparison.
- Context.dev vs LinkupSearch plus full-page scraping of protected sites. 38 of 40 agent scrape tasks finished in an independent benchmark, against Linkup’s 34.
- Context.dev vs TavilySearch with the relevant passages from every result for 2 credits, plus anti-bot scraping, crawl, and batches.
- Context.dev vs ExaSearch plus full-page scraping of protected sites, crawl, map, and batches of 100,000 URLs on one key.
Ready to switch from You.com?
Point your search, contents, and answer calls at Context.dev, add passages or Markdown per result, and start on the free plan with 1,000 credits a month.