Tools for AI agents, compared by verified data
Tools for AI agents, compared honestly — verified pricing, free tiers, rate limits, and API/MCP support, no hype.
Quick answer
An AI agent is only as capable as the tools it can call. Most working agent stacks combine the same six pieces: a web search API for fresh facts, a scraping or browser API for pages search can't reach, a speech-to-text API for audio, MCP servers to plug tools in with one standard connection, an automation platform for the boring glue work, and an enrichment API for people/company data. Every tool in our dataset is checked against the vendor's own published pricing and docs — entry price, free tier, rate limits where published, API access, and MCP support — and the whole dataset is free to read as JSON.
All tools in the dataset
| Tool | Category | Entry price | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tavily | Web search APIs | $30/month (Project, 4,000 credits/month, lowest monthly plan); pay-as-you-go $0.008/credit | Yes — 1,000 free credits/month, no credit card required |
| Exa | Web search APIs | $4 per 1,000 requests (Lite Search) — usage-based, no minimum plan | Yes — $10 in free credits per month, all endpoints |
| Brave Search API | Web search APIs | $5 per 1,000 requests (Search plan) | No standalone free plan — plans include $5 in free credits every month (credit card required) |
| Serper | Web search APIs | $50 one-time (Starter pack, 50,000 credits — $1.00 per 1,000 queries) | Yes — 2,500 free queries on signup (one-time), no credit card required |
| SerpApi | Web search APIs | $25/month (Starter, 1,000 searches/month); Developer $75/month (5,000 searches) | Yes — free plan with 250 searches/month |
| Perplexity Sonar API | Web search APIs | $5 per 1,000 requests (Search API, standard) — usage-based, no subscription | No free API tier published on the official pricing page |
| Deepgram | Voice & transcription APIs | Pay-as-you-go from $0.0077/minute (Nova-3 Monolingual / Flux STT); Growth prepaid tier $4,000+/year | Yes — $200 free credit, no credit card required |
| AssemblyAI | Voice & transcription APIs | Pay-as-you-go from $0.15/hour (Universal-2); Universal-3.5 Pro $0.21/hour; streaming $0.45/hour | Yes — $50 in Speech-to-Text credits to start |
| ElevenLabs | Voice & transcription APIs | $6/month (Starter, 30,000 credits/month, commercial license); Scribe speech-to-text API $0.22/hour | Yes — 10,000 credits/month, no commercial license |
| OpenAI Speech-to-Text API | Voice & transcription APIs | From an estimated $0.003/minute (gpt-4o-mini-transcribe); gpt-4o-transcribe an estimated $0.006/minute | No free tier stated on the official API pricing page |
| Gladia | Voice & transcription APIs | €0.16/hour (Solaria-3 async, self-serve); real-time €0.68/hour | Yes — €50 in free credits for new accounts, valid one year |
| Speechmatics | Voice & transcription APIs | From $0.12/hour (Melia 1, multilingual pre-recorded); Standard $0.23/hour, Enhanced $0.38/hour | Yes — $100 free credit on signup, no card required; first 1M TTS characters free |
| Smithery | MCP servers & tool platforms | No paid tier — free directory only | Yes — free to browse the directory |
| Composio | MCP servers & tool platforms | $29/month (lowest paid tier on the published pricing page at verification) | Yes — Hobby $0: 100,000 tool calls/month headline allowance (20,000 free tool calls on Composio-managed apps), 50,000 triggers/month |
| Glama | MCP servers & tool platforms | Not published — free directory/inspector; paid hosting tier prices not published on official pages checked | Yes — directory, search, and inspector are free |
| Arcade AI | MCP servers & tool platforms | $25/month (Team platform fee) plus usage at $0.01 per tool call | Yes — $0 platform fee, 2,000 tool calls/month, no credit card required |
| Pipedream Connect | MCP servers & tool platforms | $99/month billed annually (Startup, 10,000 usage credits and 100 external users included); $150/month billed monthly | Yes — free development plan: all features in development, no credit card; production requires Startup |
| Zapier MCP | MCP servers & tool platforms | Included from Zapier's free plan (100 tasks/month, about 50 MCP calls); paid plans from $19.99/month | Yes — available on Zapier's free plan, subject to task limits |
| Zapier | Automation & workflow platforms | $19.99/month (Professional, starting-from price on the pricing page; 750 tasks/month) | Yes — 100 tasks/month, 2-step Zaps, up to 5 active Zaps |
| Make | Automation & workflow platforms | Core plan includes 10,000 credits/month (entry price is rendered dynamically on make.com/en/pricing and could not be verified from the page text — check the live pricing page) | Yes — 1,000 credits/month free plan |
| n8n | Automation & workflow platforms | €20/month billed annually (Starter cloud, 2,500 executions); self-hosted €0 | Yes — self-hosted Community edition is free; cloud has a 14-day trial (no permanent free cloud tier) |
| Gumloop | Automation & workflow platforms | $37/month (Pro, 20,000 credits/month) | No free plan on the current pricing page (older Gumloop pages describe a free plan with 5,000 credits — not on the pricing page at verification) |
| Relay.app | Automation & workflow platforms | Not applicable — Relay.app has shut down; do not sign up | No — service shut down |
| Pipedream | Automation & workflow platforms | $99/month billed annually (Startup); $150/month billed monthly | Yes — free development plan (build and test everything; production requires Startup), no credit card required |
| Clay | AI data & enrichment APIs | Launch plan listed at $167/month headline on clay.com/pricing, while the same page's FAQ says 'starting at $185/month' (2,500 Data Credits, 15,000 Actions/month) — conflicting figures on the official page; confirm at checkout | Yes — $0 plan: 100 Data Credits/month, 500 Actions/month |
| Apollo.io | AI data & enrichment APIs | $49/user/month billed annually (Basic, lowest paid tier on the published pricing page) | Yes — free plan with 900 credits/year (75/month) |
| Clearbit (Breeze Intelligence) | AI data & enrichment APIs | Not published as a standalone product — enrichment is included with paid HubSpot; lowest official entry is a HubSpot Core Seat (Starter from $20/seat/month per HubSpot's catalog) with included credits | No standalone free tier published (HubSpot free CRM exists; enrichment uses paid credits) |
| Hunter | AI data & enrichment APIs | $49/month billed monthly (Starter, 2,000 credits/month); $34/month billed annually | Yes — free plan with monthly searches and verifications (limits on the pricing page) |
| People Data Labs | AI data & enrichment APIs | $98/month starting (Person Pro, 350+ records/month at $0.28/credit tier pricing); Company Pro from $100/month | Yes — free plan with up to 100 records/month (core fields only; email/phone obfuscated) |
| RocketReach | AI data & enrichment APIs | $33/month billed annually (Essentials, 100 lookups/month, email only); Pro $75/month billed annually | Yes — free account with 5 free lookups, no credit card required |
Guides & comparisons
MCP servers and tool platforms compared on published pricing, free tiers, and what they actually host — Smithery, Composio, Glama, Arcade AI, Pipedream Connect, and Zapier MCP.
Speech-to-text APIs compared on published per-minute pricing, free credit, concurrency limits, and MCP support — Deepgram, AssemblyAI, ElevenLabs Scribe, OpenAI, Gladia, and Speechmatics.
How web scraping and browser APIs for AI agents actually differ — fetch-and-extract vs hosted browsers vs marketplaces — what they meter, and how to evaluate Firecrawl, Apify, Browserbase and peers before you pay.
The best web search APIs for AI agents compared on published pricing, free tiers, rate limits, and MCP support — Tavily, Exa, Brave, Serper, SerpApi, and Perplexity Sonar.
APIs, keys, rate limits, and MCP explained without jargon — how an AI agent actually books, searches, buys, and builds using other companies' software, and what it costs.
Zapier, Make, and n8n compared for agent workflows on published pricing, metering, AI features, MCP support, and self-hosting — with per-operation cost math.