Best AI Agent Tools and APIs Tools (2025)

AI agents are only as good as the tools they can access. Whether you're building a research assistant, a coding agent, or an autonomous data pipeline, the APIs powering your agent's web access determine what it can actually do.

This guide covers the best AI agent tools and APIs available in 2025 -- specifically the ones that give agents real-time web access, search capabilities, and content extraction. We've tested pricing, features, and developer experience to help you choose the right stack.

Key Takeaways

• Most AI agents need three core capabilities: web search, content extraction, and structured output
• Standalone search APIs (Brave, SerpApi) work well but require separate scraping tools
• Unified platforms (SearchHive, Firecrawl) reduce integration complexity by combining search + scraping
• LLM-native tools (Tavily, Exa) optimize for RAG pipelines and AI context
• Pricing varies 10x between providers -- $3.75/mo per 1K queries (SerpApi) vs $0.40/mo per 1K (SearchHive)

1. SearchHive

SearchHive provides three APIs in one platform: SwiftSearch for web search, ScrapeForge for scraping, and DeepDive for multi-step research. It's built specifically for AI agent workflows.

Key features:

• Web search with country/language targeting and structured free JSON formatter output
• JavaScript rendering, proxy rotation, and recursive crawling
• Deep research API that chains search + extraction + summarization
• Unified credit system across all APIs
• Webhook support for async workflows

Pricing: Free tier (500 credits), Starter $9/mo (5K credits), Builder $49/mo (100K credits), Unicorn $199/mo (500K credits). At Builder tier, search queries cost roughly $0.001 each.

Best for: Teams building AI agents that need search, scraping, and research in one integrated platform.

import requests

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}", "Content-Type": "application/json"}

# Agent search
search = requests.get(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/swiftsearch",
    headers=headers,
    params={"query": "latest GPT-5 release news", "count": 5}
)

# Agent scrape
urls = [r["url"] for r in search.json()["results"]]
scrape = requests.post(
    "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1/scrapeforge",
    headers=headers,
    json={"urls": urls, "format": "markdown"}
)

2. Tavily

Tavily is an AI-native search API built specifically for LLM applications. It returns search results optimized for AI context -- meaning the content is already formatted for ingestion by language models.

Key features:

• Search results with extracted content ready for LLM context
• Built-in answer extraction with citations
• Supports search depth control (basic/advanced)
• Python and JS SDKs, plus LangChain/LlamaIndex integrations

Pricing: Free (1,000 credits/mo), Pay-as-you-go ($0.008/credit), Project plan ($12/mo for 4K credits), Enterprise (custom). Note: each search = 1 credit, each extract = 1 credit.

Best for: RAG applications and chatbots where search context goes directly to an LLM.

3. Exa (formerly Metaphor)

Exa uses neural search instead of keyword matching, which means it understands the intent behind queries rather than just matching strings. This makes it particularly strong for research-oriented agents.

Key features:

• Neural/semantic search with high relevance for complex queries
• Contents API for full-page extraction ($1/1K pages)
• Deep Search for multi-step research ($12/1K requests)
• Answer API for grounded responses ($5/1K requests)
• Monitors for tracking changes ($15/1K requests)

Pricing: Search $7/1K requests, Deep Search $12/1K, Contents $1/1K pages, Answer $5/1K. Free tier: 1,000 requests/month. Startup grants available ($1,000 in free credits).

Best for: Agents performing research tasks where semantic understanding matters more than raw throughput.

4. Brave Search API

Brave's search API runs on their independent web index (30B+ pages). It's a straightforward search API with no AI-specific features but solid coverage and fast response times.

Key features:

• Independent web index (not powered by Google or Bing)
• Specialized endpoints: web, images, videos, news, suggestions
• Goggles for custom result reranking and filtering
• Answers API for summarized responses ($4/1K queries + token costs)
• $5 free credits/month

Pricing: $5/1K search queries, $4/1K answer queries + $5/1M tokens. Enterprise custom pricing.

Best for: Agents that need broad web search coverage without vendor lock-in to Google/Bing.

5. SerpApi

SerpApi has been the go-to Google SERP scraping API for years. It parses Google search results into structured JSON, handling the constantly-changing HTML structure so you don't have to.

Key features:

• Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and many more search engines
• Structured JSON output with parsed elements (knowledge panels, local results, etc.)
• ZeroTrace mode for privacy-sensitive use cases
• High throughput at enterprise tiers

Pricing: Free (250/mo), Starter $25/mo (1K), Developer $75/mo (5K), Production $150/mo (15K), up to Cloud 3M at $7,600/mo. Per-query cost drops to $0.003 at highest tiers but starts expensive.

Best for: Teams that specifically need Google SERP data with parsed elements.

6. Firecrawl

Firecrawl focuses on turning any website into clean, LLM-ready data. It handles JavaScript rendering, CSS extraction, and site crawling.

Key features:

• Single-page scraping and recursive crawling
• Map endpoint for site structure discovery
• Search endpoint (2 credits per 10 results)
• Agent framework (web-agent) for autonomous browsing
• Open-source core available on GitHub

Pricing: Free (500 credits one-time), Hobby $16/mo (3K), Standard $83/mo (100K), Growth $333/mo (500K), Scale $599/mo (1M). Scrape = 1 credit, Crawl = 1 credit, Search = 2 credits/10 results.

Best for: Teams focused primarily on web scraping that also need basic search.

7. Jina AI Reader

Jina's Reader API (r.jina.ai) converts any URL into clean Markdown. It's simple, widely used, and has a generous free tier.

Key features:

• URL-to-Markdown conversion with JavaScript rendering
• Embedding models (jina-embeddings-v3) and reranker
• MCP server for AI tool integration
• CSS selector extraction support

Pricing: Free 1M tokens/day (Reader), Pro $0.60/1M tokens. Search endpoint available but limited. Embeddings and reranking have separate pricing.

Best for: Simple content extraction from known URLs, especially in conjunction with separate search APIs.

8. ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee is a general-purpose web scraping API with proxy rotation and JavaScript rendering.

Key features:

• Rotating proxies included
• JavaScript rendering via headless Chrome
• Screenshot and PDF generation
• Premium proxy support for hard-to-scrape sites

Pricing: Freelance $49/mo (250K requests), Startup $99/mo (1M), Business $249/mo (3M). JS rendering costs 5 credits, premium proxies cost 10-25 credits per request.

Best for: High-volume scraping that needs proxy rotation but doesn't need search.

Comparison Table

Per-1K pricing calculated at lowest paid tier equivalent. SearchHive uses a unified credit system so effective cost depends on API mix.

Recommendation

For AI agents, the right choice depends on your workflow:

Best overall for AI agents: SearchHive. The combination of search + scraping + research in a single credit-based platform eliminates the need to stitch together multiple APIs. At $49/month for 100K credits, it covers most agent workloads at a fraction of the cost of running SerpApi + Firecrawl + a separate research tool.

Best for RAG-heavy applications: Tavily. If your primary use case is feeding search results into an LLM, Tavily's output format is purpose-built for this. The pay-as-you-go model works well for variable workloads.

Best for semantic research: Exa. Neural search produces meaningfully better results for complex, nuanced queries. Worth the premium if your agent needs to understand intent rather than match keywords.

Best budget option for scraping: Jina Reader. The free tier (1M tokens/day) is genuinely useful. Pair it with Brave Search API for a low-cost search + extraction stack.

For teams currently running multiple API subscriptions, consolidating onto SearchHive can reduce both costs and integration complexity. Start with the free tier and see how it fits your agent architecture.

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See also: SearchHive vs Jina AI Developer Experience Compared | SearchHive vs SerpApi | SearchHive vs Firecrawl