Best web search & browsing APIs for AI sales agents
APIs that let AI SDRs and research agents search the web, extract pages and act in a browser, with published pricing.
How this list works: Listed alphabetically. Only tools whose own pages describe API access. Pricing verified against vendor pages (latest check ). No placement here is paid. Methodology.
| Tool | What it is | Price (vendor-published) | Free plan | Channels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apify | Web scraping and automation platform with thousands of ready-made scrapers (Actors), often used to pull lead and company data for agents. | Free ($5/mo of usage); Starter $19/mo, Scale $199/mo, Business $999/mo, each including that amount of usage plus pay-as-you-go ($0.20 to $0.13 per compute unit); 10% off billed annually; proxies and add-ons extra | Yes | — |
| Browserbase | Cloud headless browsers and infrastructure for AI agents that browse and act on websites. | Free $0/mo (1,000 fetch calls, 15-minute sessions); Developer $20/mo (100 browser hours, then $0.12/hr); Startup $99/mo (500 browser hours, then $0.10/hr); Scale custom | Yes | — |
| Exa | Web search API built for AI agents, with company and people search, page contents and asynchronous research runs. | Pay per use: free $10 in credits every month plus a $10 onboarding bonus; Search from $4 per 1,000 requests (Deep Search $12), page contents $1 per 1,000 pages, Monitors $15 per 1,000 requests; Agent runs $0.012–$1.00 each; contact enrichment $0.02 per email, $0.07 per phone | Yes | — |
| Firecrawl | Web scraping, crawling and search API that turns websites into clean data for AI agents and LLM apps. | Free (1,000 credits/mo); Hobby $16/mo billed yearly ($19 monthly, 5,000 credits); Standard $83/mo billed yearly (100,000 credits); Growth $333 (500,000); Scale $599 (1,000,000); extra credits $5 per 1,000–5,000 by plan; Enterprise custom | Yes | — |
| Parallel | Web research and search APIs for AI agents, with structured outputs and citations. | Pay as you go; Task API (deep web research with structured outputs) from $5 per 1,000 requests (Lite) to $2,400 per 1,000 (Ultra8x); Search, Extract and other APIs priced per request; up to 5,000 free requests/mo and $5 free credits/mo | Yes | — |
| Tavily | Web search and extraction API built for AI agents and LLM apps. | Researcher free (1,000 API credits/mo, no card); Project $30/mo (4,000 credits, higher rate limits); pay as you go $0.008/credit; Enterprise custom | Yes | — |
FAQ
Which web search APIs have a free tier?
Tavily gives 1,000 free API credits a month, Exa $10 in free credits monthly, Parallel up to 5,000 free requests a month, Firecrawl 1,000 free credits, Apify $5/mo of usage and Browserbase a free plan.
How are they priced?
Tavily: Project $30/mo or $0.008/credit pay as you go. Exa: Search from $4 per 1,000 requests. Parallel: Task API from $5 to $2,400 per 1,000 requests by research depth. Firecrawl: Hobby $16/mo billed yearly. Browserbase: Developer $20/mo, Startup $99/mo plus browser hours.
Compare tools from this list
- Exa vs Firecrawl
- Firecrawl vs Apify
- Tavily vs Exa
- Tavily vs Firecrawl
- Parallel vs Exa
- Parallel vs Tavily
- Browserbase vs Apify
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