How to use You.com
For consumer use, chat and run research reports from the web app. For developers, call the search API to retrieve results, the contents API to pull clean page text, and the research API for multi-step research billed by effort. New API accounts get free starter credits to prototype.
Best for
Developer web-retrieval APIs for grounding LLMs. A deep-research agent producing long multi-source reports. Usage-billed research tiers for retrieval pipelines.
How it behaves
It shifted from a seat-priced consumer product to usage-billed retrieval and research APIs, so consumer plan pricing became less prominent. The research agent uses effort tiers from light to exhaustive.
Tips
Use the retrieval APIs to ground your own LLM apps. Pick the effort tier that matches how deep you need to go. Spend the free starter credits to prototype.
Pricing
Usage-based APIs: search from about $5 per thousand calls, content extraction cheaper, and research higher, with free starter credits for new accounts.