You.com MCP Server

An Apify Standby Actor that serves the You.com MCP server over the MCP Streamable HTTP transport.

It gives your LLM or agent live web search, full page content extraction, citation-backed research, finance research, account balance lookup, and agent/tool discovery through one stable HTTPS endpoint — no local process to run and no MCP client to install. This is a hosted MCP server and API endpoint, not a scraper: it produces no dataset, and every call is answered in real time.

Why use this Actor?

• Zero-install MCP. Point any MCP client at one URL. Nothing to npx, no stdio process to supervise.
• Always warm. Apify Standby keeps the server ready, so there is no cold-start latency per query.
• Bring your own key, or don't. Use the Actor operator's You.com key, supply your own, or run keyless with the free profile.
• Scoped tools. Expose only you-search for a cheap agent, or only you-research on a dedicated endpoint, and give high-impact tools their own endpoint and budget.
• Standby platform features. Stable hostname, automatic scaling across runs, and Apify's scheduling, API, webhooks, and monitoring around it.

Available tools

There is no you-answer tool.

you-balance requires your own key

you-balance reports the billing balance of whichever You.com key performs the call. Serving it with the Actor operator's key would disclose that account's balance to any caller, so this Actor refuses to do it: the tool is hidden from tools/list and rejected on tools/call unless the request carries an X-YDC-API-Key header. All other tools fall back to the operator key when you bring none.

How to connect

Create or open the Actor, enable Standby mode, and copy the Standby URL from the Standby tab: https://<your-username>--you-mcp.apify.actor.

MCP client configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "you": {
      "url": "https://your-username--you-mcp.apify.actor/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>",
        "X-YDC-API-Key": "<YDC_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Drop the X-YDC-API-Key header to use the Actor operator's key, or call .../mcp?profile=free for the keyless tool set. Because you control both headers, you can safely give a scoped Apify token to a third party without exposing your account.

Authentication

Every request needs both of the following, unless noted:

Authorization: Bearer is already taken by Apify authentication, which is why the You.com key travels in X-YDC-API-Key. The Apify token is never forwarded to You.com, and ?token= is stripped before forwarding.

Clients that support the Machine Payments Protocol (x402) can instead pay per call by sending Authorization: Payment ... and passing the Apify token as ?token=.

Endpoints

On /mcp/research and /mcp/finance the tools query parameter and X-Allowed-Tools header are ignored, matching the upstream server. The profile ceiling still applies.

Scoping tools

you-research and you-finance are not in the default allowlist; request them explicitly. The default set is you-search, you-contents, you-balance, you-discover.

Example calls

Initialize:

curl -sS -X POST 'https://your-username--you-mcp.apify.actor/mcp?profile=free' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"curl","version":"0"}}}'

Search the web:

curl -sS -X POST 'https://your-username--you-mcp.apify.actor/mcp?profile=free' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"you-search","arguments":{"query":"grid-scale battery storage news","count":5}}}'

Responses arrive as text/event-stream (JSON-RPC messages in SSE data: lines) or plain JSON, depending on your Accept header. Long-running calls such as you-research stream while they work, so your client receives progress instead of waiting in silence.

Input

This Actor takes no initialization input — it is a server, and all request data arrives over HTTP. See the input tab for the (empty) schema. Configuration is entirely through environment variables:

APIFY_TOKEN must not be set by hand: the Apify platform provides it, and the local CLI resolves it from your login.

Output

There is no dataset. MCP responses are returned directly to the caller on the same HTTP connection, and run logs and charges are the only per-call records kept. Downloading datasets does not apply to this Actor.

How much will it cost?

This Actor runs in Standby mode, so you pay for the compute of the running server, plus Apify platform usage. Idle time counts while the server is kept warm — raise the idle timeout in the Standby tab and lower the memory setting to reduce cost, or create a Task to tune those per audience.

Two further costs apply:

• You.com usage. Calls made with the operator key consume that account's You.com credits. Callers who bring their own key pay You.com themselves and consume none of yours.
• Pay-per-event (optional). When YDC_PPE_CHARGING_ENABLED=true and the events are configured in Apify Console, successful tools/call requests are charged per tool (you-search-call, you-contents-call, you-research-call, you-finance-call, you-discover-call). Calls that fail, keyless-profile calls, and callers who pay You.com directly (their own key or x402) are never charged. When a caller's budget runs out, the server stops forwarding work.

Local development

brew install apify-cli
apify login          # browser sign-in, or set APIFY_TOKEN for headless use
apify run            # starts the server on http://localhost:4321 with local storage

Always use apify run rather than bun run start: it sets up the Apify environment and storage. Then:

# Readiness probe
curl -i -H 'x-apify-container-server-readiness-probe: true' http://localhost:4321/

# Keyless round-trip
curl -sS -X POST 'http://localhost:4321/mcp?profile=free' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}'

Quality gates:

bun test         # unit + integration tests against a stub upstream
bun run check    # Biome + strict TypeScript

Put local secrets in .env (git-ignored); see .env.example. For the platform, add a secret with apify secrets add ydcApiKey <value> and reference it as @ydcApiKey from the Actor's environment variables.

Tips

• Scope tightly. Give each agent only the tools it needs: ?tools=you-search is far cheaper than the full set, and it stops a model from invoking an expensive research run without being asked.
• Separate expensive tools. Use /mcp/research and /mcp/finance as dedicated endpoints so you can attach their own key, budget, or rate expectations.
• Start keyless. ?profile=free needs no You.com account, which is the fastest way to validate a client configuration.
• Prefer you-search with extraction: "highlights". It is much cheaper than fetching full pages you will not read.

FAQ

Do I need a You.com API key?

No, if you only use you-search and you-discover through ?profile=free (100 queries/day), or if the Actor operator has configured a key. Yes, for you-research, you-finance, you-balance, and for avoiding the free daily limit.

Can I use this without an Apify account?

Not for the hosted Standby URL — it requires an Apify token. For a fully keyless local setup, run the upstream npx @youdotcom-oss/mcp instead.

Why did you-balance disappear from the tool list?

Because the request carried no X-YDC-API-Key. That is deliberate: see you-balance requires your own key.

Does this Actor replace the You.com MCP server?

No. It is a proxy in front of it, so tool behaviour, parameters, and responses stay identical to https://api.you.com/mcp, including the profile, tools, /mcp/finance, and /mcp/research semantics. Swapping the base URL back to api.you.com should change nothing except authentication.

Support

Report problems in the Issues tab. Include the run log, the JSON-RPC request, and whether you used your own key — never paste API tokens. For You.com tool behaviour itself, see the You.com MCP server documentation.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Our Actors are ethical and do not extract any private user data, such as email addresses, gender, or location. They only extract what the user has chosen to share publicly. However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data. Personal data is protected by the GDPR in the European Union and by other regulations around the world. You should not process personal data unless you have a legitimate reason to do so. If you are unsure whether your reason is legitimate, consult your lawyers.