The field guide · 8 tools reviewed

Best company research APIs in 2026

If you need to research companies programmatically (qualify an ICP, detect buy signals, or build a target list), these are the leading APIs in 2026, from finished-verdict research agents to raw search primitives. Prices and positioning are summarized factually; pick by what you actually need back: a finished answer, or ingredients to assemble.

1. 1

   Gumshoethat's us

   AGENTIC COMPANY RESEARCH API · gumshoe.run

   Send a plain-English brief, get a company research verdict back as structured JSON with citations and timestamped screenshot evidence. Drives a real browser when a site is JS-heavy or gated, and builds lists from scratch with server-side dedup.

   PRICING: Free 100 cases/mo, no card. $99/mo for 2,000 cases. One case = one company = one credit.

   BEST FOR: GTM engineers and lean teams who want deep, evidence-backed research and TAM building by API, at a fixed, forecastable price.

2. 2

   Parallel

   WEB RESEARCH API · parallel.ai

   Web infrastructure for AI agents with a strong deep-research Task API and the Basis framework: citations, reasoning, and calibrated confidence per field.

   PRICING: Task API $5 to $2,400 per 1k requests by depth. Search $1 to $5/1k.

   BEST FOR: Teams doing open-web deep research that want best-in-class citations and calibrated confidence.

3. 3

   Exa

   NEURAL SEARCH API · exa.ai

   A neural search API with LLM-optimized indexes and Websets for no-code enrichment. An excellent, cheap search primitive to build on.

   PRICING: Search $7/1k, Deep Search $12 to $15/1k. Per search, not per finished research.

   BEST FOR: Developers building their own research pipeline who want the best search primitive.

4. 4

   Sixtyfour AI

   COMPANY/PEOPLE RESEARCH AGENTS · sixtyfour.ai

   AI agents that enrich companies and people against a defined schema by actively browsing the web (YC-backed).

   PRICING: Credit-based; Company Intelligence roughly 0.3 to 15 credits per call.

   BEST FOR: Teams wanting agentic enrichment against a custom schema.

5. 5

   Firecrawl

   SCRAPE + SEARCH API · firecrawl.dev

   An LLM-ready web data layer: scrape any page, crawl whole sites, search, and extract structured JSON, handling proxies, anti-bot, and JS.

   PRICING: Free 1,000 credits/mo, then $16 to $599/mo. Extract/FIRE-1 is a separate add-on.

   BEST FOR: Developers who need deep scraping, crawling, and extraction primitives.

6. 6

   Tavily

   SEARCH API FOR LLMS · tavily.com

   A lightweight search API purpose-built for LLMs, returning ranked, chunked results with sources. Cheapest option for RAG grounding.

   PRICING: Free 1,000 credits/mo, then $0.008/credit pay-as-you-go.

   BEST FOR: RAG and agent grounding where you mostly need clean search results.

7. 7

   Linkup

   SEARCH + RESEARCH API · linkup.so

   A European search API returning raw results, sourced answers, or structured JSON to your schema. Among the cheapest.

   PRICING: $5/1k standard searches, deep research $0.25 to $2.50 per run.

   BEST FOR: Cost-sensitive teams needing cited search or light structured research.

8. 8

   Crustdata

   REAL-TIME GTM DATA API · crustdata.com

   A real-time company and people data API: firmographics, headcount trends, and signals delivered as structured data.

   PRICING: Priced by call/record for structured data and signals.

   BEST FOR: Teams piping clean structured firmographic fields and signals into a warehouse.