{
  "artifact": "pricing-history",
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "version": "TODO_VERSION",
  "verified_at": "2026-09-03",
  "published_at": "TODO_PUBLISH_DATE",
  "license": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "attribution": "Benchology",
  "window": {
    "start": "2024-09-01",
    "end": "2026-09-03",
    "months": 24
  },
  "measures": "Base search rate in USD per 1,000 requests. Endpoint-specific rates, research tiers, agent runs and per-content-type billing are deliberately excluded: they are different units and mixing them would make the series incomparable across vendors.",
  "epistemic_status": {
    "is_measurement": false,
    "assesses": "what each vendor's published price was on a given date, and when it demonstrably changed",
    "does_not_assess": [
      "what any customer actually paid",
      "negotiated or enterprise rates",
      "whether a rate is good value"
    ],
    "tracker_policy": "A third-party price tracker can locate a change but never establish one. Where the only source is a tracker, the event is recorded with source_grade third_party_reported and, if the date itself is unsourced, an uncertain_from span rather than a step on a date we cannot cite."
  },
  "enums": {
    "source_grade": {
      "directly_verifiable": "We retrieved the artifact ourselves and it is independently checkable.",
      "third_party_reported": "Sourced from a tracker, press report, or analysis we did not produce.",
      "vendor_claimed": "Asserted by the vendor with no independently checkable artifact behind it."
    }
  },
  "series": [
    {
      "id": "tavily",
      "vendor": "Tavily",
      "flat": true,
      "events": [
        {
          "date": "2024-09-01",
          "usd_per_1k": 8,
          "label": "$0.008 per credit, unchanged through the window",
          "source_grade": "third_party_reported"
        }
      ],
      "note": "Billed per credit: $0.008 per credit is $8.00 per 1,000 credits. The $7.50 in the retrieval table is per 1,000 searches — a different unit, not a conflicting figure. Wayback-derived; verify against the live page."
    },
    {
      "id": "exa",
      "vendor": "Exa",
      "events": [
        {
          "date": "2024-09-01",
          "usd_per_1k": 5,
          "label": "$5.00 per 1,000, from a 2025 forum comment by a team member",
          "source_grade": "vendor_claimed"
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-03-03",
          "usd_per_1k": 7,
          "label": "$7.00 per 1,000 established by the changelog. The date of the rise is not established — it happened somewhere in this span",
          "source_grade": "directly_verifiable",
          "conflict_id": "exa_increase_date",
          "uncertain_from": "2025-01-01"
        }
      ],
      "note": "The 2026-03-03 changelog announces simplified and lowered pricing and fixes the $7 level on that date; it does not date the rise. Two tracker records place the raise at 2026-04 and 2026-07-29, both after the changelog already quotes $7, so neither can be the transition either. Pending re-derivation from Archive captures."
    },
    {
      "id": "linkup",
      "vendor": "Linkup",
      "flat": true,
      "events": [
        {
          "date": "2024-09-01",
          "usd_per_1k": 5,
          "label": "€5 to $5.00 per 1,000 — currency only, no rate change",
          "source_grade": "third_party_reported"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "brave",
      "vendor": "Brave",
      "events": [
        {
          "date": "2024-09-01",
          "usd_per_1k": 0,
          "label": "Free tier at 2,000 queries/month, live since May 2023",
          "source_grade": "third_party_reported"
        },
        {
          "date": "2025-08-01",
          "usd_per_1k": 0,
          "label": "Free allowance raised to 5,000 queries/month under the AI Grounding update",
          "source_grade": "third_party_reported"
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-02-12",
          "usd_per_1k": 5,
          "label": "Free tier removed, replaced by $5 in monthly credits; $5.00 per 1,000 metered, plus a new attribution requirement",
          "source_grade": "third_party_reported",
          "conflict_id": "brave_pricing_trackers"
        }
      ],
      "note": "The February 2026 event carries two adverse elements, not one: the tier removal and an attribution requirement that did not previously apply. Existing free-plan subscribers at 2,000 queries/month reportedly kept access, so grandfathering is partial rather than absent — that sits between two anchors and is recorded in the scorecard rather than carried by the score."
    },
    {
      "id": "you_com",
      "vendor": "You.com",
      "events": [
        {
          "date": "2025-10-01",
          "usd_per_1k": 6.25,
          "label": "API platform launch: Web Search $6.25 per 1,000 for 1–50 results, $8.00 for 50–100",
          "source_grade": "third_party_reported"
        },
        {
          "date": "2026-03-11",
          "usd_per_1k": 5,
          "label": "Consolidated to a flat $5.00 per 1,000 for up to 100 results — a reduction, effective immediately",
          "source_grade": "directly_verifiable",
          "conflict_id": "you_com_tracker_vs_vendor"
        }
      ],
      "start_note": "The API platform launched 2025-10, so there is no earlier level to plot.",
      "note": "Existing pay-as-you-go and grandfathered plans moved automatically to the lower rates, enterprise contracts were honoured through end of term and credits carried over. Launch rates are tracker and Archive sourced and still need verifying."
    },
    {
      "id": "keenable",
      "vendor": "Keenable",
      "events": [
        {
          "date": "2026-08-20",
          "usd_per_1k": 4,
          "label": "$4.00 per 1,000 at public launch",
          "source_grade": "third_party_reported"
        }
      ],
      "start_note": "Publicly available roughly two weeks at the verification date. The short line is insufficient history, not a stable record."
    }
  ],
  "pending_verification": [
    {
      "vendor_id": "you_com",
      "event": "2026-03-03 Research API launch; its rates have not moved since.",
      "why_unpublished": "Not a base search rate change. Recorded for completeness."
    },
    {
      "vendor_id": "you_com",
      "event": "2026-07-22 Frontier research tier published at $1,200 per 1,000, docs following 2026-07-29. By the 2026-07-29 capture, Search is free for the first 100 calls per day and $5.00 per 1,000 thereafter.",
      "why_unpublished": "A separate research tier, not the base search rate. The free-first-100-per-day quota is also the reported pricing-page-versus-docs discrepancy that holds the price_stability score at 3 rather than 4, and is unconfirmed against the live docs."
    },
    {
      "vendor_id": "exa",
      "event": "2026-05-01 /research/v1 hard-removed.",
      "why_unpublished": "A sunset event on the documentation axis, not a price change."
    },
    {
      "vendor_id": "exa",
      "event": "2026-07-14 free tier 1,000 to 20,000 requests/month; Agent range $0.025–$2.00 to $0.012–$1.00 with a new Minimal mode; X-high halved to $1.00; in-agent search $0.007 to $0.005; Agent Compute Units $0.0001 to $0.10.",
      "why_unpublished": "Tracker-sourced. Section 12 forbids establishing a change from a tracker, so this needs a primary source before publication. The ACU cell stays unresolved until then."
    },
    {
      "vendor_id": "exa",
      "event": "2026-07-29 a competing record dates the base Search raise to $7 per 1,000.",
      "why_unpublished": "A third position on exa_increase_date, which is already recorded as unresolved. Publishing it as the transition would establish a change from a tracker."
    },
    {
      "vendor_id": "brave",
      "event": "The February 2026 announcement URL and its full ISO date.",
      "why_unpublished": "Required by the conventions and still missing; tracked as TODO_BRAVE_ANNOUNCEMENT_URL in scorecard.json."
    }
  ]
}