You.com
Overview
You.com started as a privacy-focused AI search engine and now centers on ARI, its research agent, and the usage-billed developer API platform that sells it. Consumer chat subscriptions no longer carry public pricing; the company has completed the shift to per-use billing across its Web Search, Contents, Answer, Research, and Finance Research APIs. Its primary market is regulated industries — finance, healthcare — where source verification is non-negotiable.
Key Features
1. ARI (Advanced Research & Insights)
An agent that processes 400+ sources simultaneously and produces professional-grade research reports in minutes, with verified citations, charts, and interactive visualizations. Its ability to analyze public and private sources together is the reason regulated industries adopt it.
2. Research API (ARI, sold per call)
The same ARI capability exposed through a single research_effort parameter. Choose from Lite, Standard, Deep, Exhaustive, and Frontier to dial depth against latency and cost. The top Frontier tier got an accuracy upgrade in July 2026 and holds the #1 position on the DeepSearchQA benchmark.
3. A Five-API Suite
Web Search (results), Contents (page body retrieval), Answer (cited answer synthesis), Research (multi-step investigation), and Finance Research (finance-specific deep work) are separate endpoints you call as needed. The suite is widely used as a RAG backend for LLM agents.
4. Enterprise Agentic Workflow
A platform for building custom multi-step agents that blend internal data with real-time web intelligence, with auditable cited output as the default.
Pricing
Everything is usage-based API pricing, and every paid tier starts with $100 in free credit.
| API | Price |
|---|---|
| Web Search API | Free tier 100 queries/day, then $5 / 1,000 calls |
| Contents API | $1 / 1,000 pages |
| Answer API | $5 / 1,000 calls |
| Research API | $12 / 1,000 calls (Lite through Frontier) |
| Finance Research API | $110 / 1,000 calls (Deep / Exhaustive) |
| Enterprise / ARI | Contact sales |
Typical Use Cases
- Automated research reports for regulated industries, with auditable citations
- Enterprise agents that span internal data and the live web
- Search / Contents APIs as the RAG layer for LLM apps
- Finance research via the Finance Research API, switching depth per call
Strengths
- ARI processes 400+ sources at once with click-through to every source
- Research API ranked #1 on DeepSearchQA
- Depth is an explicit parameter, so you control the accuracy/cost tradeoff
- Search, retrieval, answering, and research are separate APIs — use only the layer you need
Weaknesses
- The consumer-facing product has effectively been wound down, making it hard to pick for personal use
- Japanese UI and documentation are undeveloped
- Fierce competition among search APIs (Exa, Tavily, Perplexity)
- Research API unit cost swings widely by effort tier, which makes budgeting hard up front
Official
- Website: https://you.com