Quickstart

Welcome to the You.com API developer platform. In just a few minutes, you’ll know how to run a web search that returns real-time, highly relevant and accurate results.

Get your API key

  1. Sign in or create an account on our platform here. We’ll start you off with $100 in complimentary credits. No credit card necessary.
  2. From the sidebar, navigate to the API Keys section and create a new key.
  3. Copy your API key and store it securely. Once it is generated, this will be the only time you have access to it. If you lose your key, you’ll have to create a new one.

Make your first API call

Make your first API call with our Search API.

The Search API is designed to return LLM-ready web results based on a user’s natural language query. Imagine you want to feed an LLM with the information that comes from a question like “What is the capital of the USA?”. To do so, write the following:

1from youdotcom import You
2
3# Initialize the SDK with your API key
4you = You("YOUR_API_KEY")
5
6# Perform a search
7results = you.search.unified(
8 query="What is the capital of the USA?"
9)
10
11# Access the results
12print(results)
Install our Python SDK to run the Python SDK code above

You should see something like this:

JSON
1{
2 "results": {
3 "web": [
4 {
5 "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States",
6 "title": "List of capitals in the United States - Wikipedia",
7 "description": "In the following table, the \"Since\" column shows the year that the city began serving as the state's capital (or the capital of the entities that preceded it). The MSA/μSA and CSA columns display the population of the metro area the city is a part of, and should not be construed to mean the ...",
8 "snippets": [
9 "In the following table, the \"Since\" column shows the year that the city began serving as the state's capital (or the capital of the entities that preceded it). The MSA/μSA and CSA columns display the population of the metro area the city is a part of, and should not be construed to mean the population of the city's sphere of influence or that the city is an anchor for the metro area.",
10 "An insular area is a United States territory that is neither a part of one of the fifty states nor a part of the District of Columbia, the nation's federal district. Those insular areas with territorial capitals are listed below.",
11 "The building served as the capitol until 1907, when the Dawes Act finally dissolved the Cherokee Nation and Tahlequah became the county seat of Cherokee County, Oklahoma. The Cherokee National government was re-established in 1938 and Tahlequah remains the capital of the modern Cherokee Nation; it is also the capital of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.",
12 "Some Cherokees fleeing the Federal Army, sent for the \"round up\", fled to the remote settlements separated from the rest of the Cherokee Territory in Georgia and North Carolina, in order to remain in their homeland. In the 20th century, their descendants organized as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians; its capital is at Cherokee, North Carolina, in the tribally-controlled Qualla Boundary.",
13 "After Removal from their Alabama-Georgia homeland, the Creek national government met near Hot Springs which was then part of their new territory as prescribed in the Treaty of Cusseta. Because some Creeks fought with the Confederacy in the American Civil War, the Union forced the Creeks to cede over 3,000,000-acre (1,200,000 ha) - half of their land in what is now Arkansas. ... Served as the National capital after the American Civil War."
14 ],
15 "thumbnail_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/View_of_Empire_State_Building_from_Rockefeller_Center_New_York_City_dllu_%28cropped%29.jpg/1200px-View_of_Empire_State_Building_from_Rockefeller_Center_New_York_City_dllu_%28cropped%29.jpg",
16 "page_age": "2025-09-06T20:05:44",
17 "favicon_url": "https://you.com/favicon?domain=en.wikipedia.org&size=128"
18 },
19 {
20 "url": "https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-capital-of-the-united-states-of-america.html",
21 "title": "What Is the Capital of the USA? - WorldAtlas",
22 "description": "Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States of America.",
23 "snippets": [
24 "The capital city of the United States of America is Washington, D.C., and can be referred to formally as the District of Columbia or more informally as D.C. or Washington. In 2017, the city had a population of 6,131,977 and an approximate size of 68.34 square miles.",
25 "This climate is prone to thunderstorms, which may be sometimes accompanied by tornadoes. The highest temperature ever recorded in D.C. was 106 °F in 1918, while the lowest was −15 °F in 1899. The economy of the capital is booming, with a steady performance compared to the other US states.",
26 "Data shows that the capital consistently ranks first among the top ten US states in terms of GDP between 2009 and 2016. In 2016 alone, the GDP per capita was $160,472, a figure that is almost three times as large as that of the GDP of the second-highest state, Massachusetts.",
27 "Tourism is the second largest contributor to D.C.’s economy, as the city receives an annual average of almost 20 million visitors. Aside from the obvious allure of visiting a city that is a country's capital, there are several other features that attract visitors from all over the world every year."
28 ],
29 "thumbnail_url": "https://www.worldatlas.com/r/w1200-q80/upload/a3/ff/46/shutterstock-796865242.jpg",
30 "page_age": "2019-07-16T20:44:56",
31 "favicon_url": "https://you.com/favicon?domain=www.worldatlas.com&size=128"
32 }
33 ]
34 },
35 "metadata": {
36 "query": "what is the capital of the USA?",
37 "search_uuid": "c7df26d5-8255-4f70-8b88-64d156775be6",
38 "latency": 0.47196125984191895
39 }
40}

This is a very simple example, but can be much more powerful. You can specify the number of results you want, narrow down on region and language and a lot more. Learn more here.

We return reliable, highly accurate and well structured results that make the answer to the original question easy to find. You can decide how many results you want to see. Then, an LLM can easily synthesise the results above to provide the answer you’re looking for: Washington D.C.

To learn more about our APIs and how to use them, read the API reference.