Disclosure: I run Lantern Works. Many listings (105 of 137) are affiliate/referral links; the rest are non-affiliate free tiers and vendor coupons. Affiliate status doesn't affect ordering.

Agents keep needing two boring things: search results and a picture of a web page. I compared the free options from vendor pricing pages. Anything not verified is marked as such.

Search / SERP APIs

Provider Free option (verified on vendor page)

Bright Data 5,000 free credits/mo, no card (application required)

SerpApi 250 successful searches/mo on Free plan

Tavily 1,000 API credits every month

Exa $10 credits/month + $10 onboarding bonus, no payment method; Search from $4/1k requests

APILayer, Scrapingdog, SERP-Tool not verified

Rule of thumb: raw SERP APIs (SerpApi, Bright Data) for rank tracking; AI-search APIs (Tavily, Exa) for agent retrieval.

Screenshot / headless browser APIs

Provider Free option (verified)

Browserbase 3 concurrent browsers, 1 browser hour, 1k Search+Fetch

Browserless 1k units/month, 2…