Valyu
- Free allowance
- USD 10 of free credits on signup, USD 20 with a company email, no card; the free credits expire 12 months after signup
- Verdict
- triala time-boxed or one-time trial, not a recurring allowance
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- request-rateUSD 10 one-time (USD 20 with a company email), about 1,600 ten-result web searches at 1 credit each; a request the balance cannot cover answers 402 and nothing is billed as overage; 5 search requests a second on the Pay-as-you-go plan...
- Evidence
- documented24 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-03checked 2026-11-02 (live); stale on 2026-12-03
| Free tier | USD 10 of free credits on signup, USD 20 with a company email, no card; the free credits expire 12 months after signup unit credits; metered on request-count; Search is billed per result returned, not per request, and priced per source: a 10-result web search is 1 credit, and pay-as-you-go buys 1,600 credits per USD 10. The nearest metered_on term is request-count; the true basis is the count of results returned (result-count), a term the vocabulary lacks. |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
The pricing page lists the signup credit in its Pay As You Go plan card, priced Free, with every data source while the free credits last and then web, arXiv and PubMed on pay-as-you-go, and the academia page says new accounts get the credits across every source and then pay as you go; the documented plan IDs are tier_0 Pay-as-you-go, tier_1 Ridiculously Cheap, tier_2 Comfortably Pro and tier_3 Serious Business, with no plan named for signup credits |
| Binding | request-rate the one-time signup balance is exhausted long before the 5-a-second rate limit is reached |
| Identity | email signup by email, Google or GitHub with no card; a company email doubles the signup credit to USD 20 |
| Egress | not applicable |
| Per-object cap | not applicable: the unit is a search result |
| Retention | one-time signup credit; it expires 12 months after signup and does not renew |
| Interface | rest POST https://api.valyu.ai/v1/search with an x-api-key header; Contents, Answer and DeepResearch endpoints draw on the same key and balance; a hosted MCP server is offered endpoint: https://api.valyu.ai/v1/search |
| Tooling | Python SDK (pip install valyu), TypeScript SDK (valyu-js), Rust SDK, a CLI and a hosted MCP server |
| Composes with | A bounded search leg whose one key also reaches SEC filings, arXiv, PubMed, patents and clinical trials, priced per result; the signup balance is spent once, so it suits a finite job rather than a standing crawl |
| Reliability | a keyless GET to /v1/search answered 403 with a missing-token message, so there is no anonymous route; no throttle or ban event recorded |
| Notes | Search is priced per result by source: 0.1 credit per web or news result, 0.05 for arXiv and PubMed, 1.92 for SEC filings, 4.8 for Wiley publications. Monthly plans start at USD 29 for 5,000 credits. The free balance reaches every source on the standard plans while it lasts. |
| Evidence note | documented the signup credit, its 12-month expiry, the no-card statement and the per-result price are quoted from first-party documentation; no keyed search was made, so the read path is unprobed; a keyed call that returns results would raise it to measured |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 24
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-30 | docs.valyu.ai/pricing.md | the signup credit is one-time and expires 12 months after signup |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.valyu.ai/pricing.md | USD 10 free on signup, USD 20 with a company email, no card |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.valyu.ai/pricing.md | a 10-result web search costs 1 credit |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.valyu.ai/pricing.md | pay-as-you-go buys 1,600 credits per USD 10, which is 1,600 ten-result web searches |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.valyu.ai/api-reference/overview.md | the documented 429 example sets 5 search requests a second on the Pay-as-you-go plan |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.valyu.ai/api-reference/overview.md | rate limits are per second with no daily quota |
| 2026-10-30 | platform.valyu.ai/ | the signup page offers email, Google or GitHub with free credits and no card |
| 2026-10-30 | www.valyu.ai/pricing | an exhausted balance pauses requests rather than billing overage |
| 2026-10-30 | probe: api.valyu.ai/v1/search | a keyless GET to the search endpoint answered 403 with a missing-token body |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/api-reference/overview.md | the documented 429 example gives the Pay-as-you-go plan 5 search requests a second and Ridiculously Cheap 10 |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/api-reference/endpoint/search.md | the OpenAPI description on the Search reference states a default of 10 requests per second, bursts up to 20 and 86,400 requests a day |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/api-reference/warnings.md | the documented plan IDs are tier_0 Pay-as-you-go to tier_3 Serious Business, with no plan named for signup credits |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/pricing.md | Search is charged per result returned, priced per source, and not as a flat fee per query |
| 2026-11-01 | www.valyu.ai/pricing | the Pay As You Go plan card of the pricing page is priced Free and holds the signup credit of USD 10, or USD 20 with a work email, with no card |
| 2026-11-01 | www.valyu.ai/academia-research | new accounts get the signup credit across every source and then pay as you go, which covers web search, arXiv and PubMed |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/changelog/sdk-and-api.md | the changelog entry of October 21, 2026 states that rate limits scale with the plan and that there is no daily quota |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/api-reference/openapi.json | the OpenAPI file itself carries the same default-rate sentence |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/api-reference/overview.md | rate limits apply per organisation and per endpoint, and are lower on cheaper plans |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/pricing.md | part of the text of Free tier, above |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/pricing.md | the signup credit expires 12 months after signup |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/pricing.md | a request that the balance cannot cover answers 402 and is not run, with no overage charge |
| 2026-11-01 | platform.valyu.ai/ | the sign-in page offers sign-up by email, Google or GitHub and states free credits with no card |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.valyu.ai/api-reference/overview.md | requests go to api.valyu.ai with the key in an x-api-key header and JSON bodies |
| 2026-11-01 | probe: api.valyu.ai/v1/search | a keyless GET to the search endpoint answered 403 with a missing-token body |
Unknown values 1
- egress terms: the field does not apply to this kind of offer