A free Tavily alternative for jobs and home services
Tavily is a web search API built for AI agents. It returns web results with snippets or page content, and an optional short answer, which suits research, news and questions about the web. When an agent’s task is to find a job opening or a plumber and act on it, pages are one step removed from what it needs. AgentBeacon, at agentbeacon.sh, is built on beacons. Each is a few plain words about what someone has or needs right now, live while they renew it, and any AI agent can find it and message them. It returns them free and with no key: each hiring beacon with its link to apply, and each home-service business messaged through AgentBeacon.
What Tavily asks for
From Tavily’s pricing page and its credits docs, read on October 13, 2026:
- The free Researcher plan gives 1,000 credits a month, with no card.
- A basic search costs 1 credit and an advanced search 2.
- After that, the Project plan is $30 a month for 4,000 credits, and pay as you go is $0.008 a credit.
- Every request needs an API key from your Tavily dashboard.
That is a fair deal for web search. A builder who only needs what’s on offer still has to sign up, keep a key, and turn pages into offers.
Pages or beacons
| Tavily | AgentBeacon | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | The web | Beacons: hiring and home services for now |
| Returns | Results with snippets or page content, and an optional short answer | One beacon per result, as Markdown |
| Acting on a result | Through the page it found | Apply on a hiring beacon, or message it through AgentBeacon |
| Free | 1,000 credits a month | 20,000 searches a day per connected agent |
| Needs | A Tavily account and an API key | One call to connect |
Many agents can use both: a web search tool for questions about the web, and AgentBeacon when the person wants a job to apply for or a business to reach.
Try it
Connect, then find:
curl https://api.agentbeacon.sh/v1/connect \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-binary '{}'
curl -G https://api.agentbeacon.sh/v1/beacons \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AGENTBEACON_TOKEN" \
--data-urlencode "q=remote data engineer jobs"Or let the JavaScript client connect for you. The Python client, agentbeacon-sdk, works the same way.
npm install @agentbeacon/sdk
import { find } from "@agentbeacon/sdk";
console.log(await find("remote data engineer jobs"));Agent apps that take MCP servers can add https://api.agentbeacon.sh/mcp/search, which needs no sign-in. The jobs docs have the full code, every parameter and each line of the answer.
A real answer
One beacon from that search, composed from the job as it read on October 15, 2026.
## Hiring: Analytics Engineer at Ontic. $135,000–$145,000 a …
> Hiring: Analytics Engineer at Ontic. $135,000–$145,000 a year. Full-time, remote. Apply: [website: open this beacon]
Expires Oct 17, 00:00 CDT · Updated yesterday
Location: anywhere
Verification (agentbeacon.sh): Seeded by AgentBeacon from Ontic’s job board, read again every day. Its employer isn’t on AgentBeacon yet: a message waits 30 days for it to join.
Link: https://agentbeacon.sh/beacon/369348e4-b3d0-490f-82b4-a666041243cfApply goes straight to the employer’s application. Link reads the beacon again on its own, which is worth doing before an agent acts on it.
What it doesn’t do yet
- Jobs come from the job boards of a growing list of companies, so many employers aren’t in it yet. Businesses are in Austin, Texas, for now.
- It finds beacons only. For news, articles or research, a web search API is still the right tool.
Questions people ask
Does AgentBeacon replace Tavily?
Only for beacons. It finds jobs and home services, and leaves the rest of the web to web search.
Do I need an API key?
No. One empty request to /v1/connect returns a token, and the agent sends it with each search.
Is it free?
Yes, up to 600 searches a minute and 20,000 a day for each connected agent. The limits page has the current numbers.