agentbeacon

Comparisons · Local business data APIs · read on October 15, 2026

AgentBeacon vs Foursquare Places API for AI agents

Foursquare Places API is Foursquare's pay-as-you-go API for searching and reading point-of-interest data from its global places database. AgentBeacon is built on beacons, each a few plain words about what someone has or needs right now, live while they renew it. Each result is one, with the employer’s Apply link for a hiring beacon or an address to message a business’s through AgentBeacon. It needs no key.

The short answer

  • Foursquare Places API: A low-cost global POI API with phone, website and email at the cheaper Pro tier. Good for place lookup and matching where Google-style display rules are too tight.
  • AgentBeacon: Giving an agent a job to apply for or a home-service business to message, with no key.

AgentBeacon covers far less today: jobs in Austin, Texas, and remote, and businesses in and around Austin. Where it has what the agent is looking for, it is free and needs no sign-up.

Foursquare Places API and AgentBeacon, side by side

Foursquare Places APIAgentBeacon
SearchesPOIs worldwide: Place Search, Place Details, Autocomplete, Place Match, Tips and Photos.Hiring beacons from employers’ own job boards (Austin, Texas, and remote) and home-service businesses around Austin
ReturnsJSON place records. Pro fields include fsq_place_id, name, coordinates, address, categories, chains, tel, website, email and social handles. Premium fields add hours, rating, price, photos, tips and popularity.Plain Markdown, one beacon per result: its own words, quoted, when it was updated, until when it’s open, and where it was seeded from. Typed JSON on request.
Before the first callA Foursquare developer account and a Service API key. Usage beyond the free calls is paid through credits or a card on file.One empty request to /v1/connect, which returns a token. No account, email or card.
Free500 free Pro calls a month since June 1, 2026, by its docs; the pricing page also says “up to 10,000 free calls on Pro endpoints”Free: 600 finds a minute and 20,000 a day for each connected agent
PaidPro endpoints: $15.00 per 1,000 calls (501 to 100,000), falling to $9.00 at volume. Premium endpoints: $18.75 per 1,000 (up to 100,000). Ask endpoints: $30 (Pro) or $36 (Premium) per 1,000.Free for agents
Acting on a resultPhone (tel), website and email are Pro fields. There is no way to message a business through the API.A hiring beacon has the employer’s Apply link; every other beacon is messaged through AgentBeacon, and the business replies there. A business that hasn’t taken over the beacon AgentBeacon seeded for it isn’t told, so a message to it waits 30 days.
Limits on keeping or showing resultsThe Developer Master Terms forbid creating derivative works of the service or its underlying data. They also treat place data as Foursquare Confidential Information, even where the facts are public. No specific cache period was found.Agents read beacons and message them; the terms say reading one doesn’t give the right to reuse it freely.
AI in its termsThe terms forbid accessing the service "to develop or improve any point-of-interest or venue dataset, algorithm, or machine learning operation(s)." The product page markets the API for AI agents through MCP.Built for AI agents. An agent may act only with its owner’s permission, and the terms don’t let AgentBeacon train AI models on what businesses write.
CoverageFoursquare says 100M+ POI across 200+ countries.Hiring in Austin, Texas, and remote; home services around Austin, for now
MCP serverfoursquare/foursquare-places-mcp on GitHub (https://github.com/foursquare/foursquare-places-mcp). The README says MCP is currently supported for local use only.https://api.agentbeacon.sh/mcp/search, with no sign-in

Try AgentBeacon

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=plumber near Austin, TX"

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("plumber near Austin, TX"));

Agent apps that take MCP servers can add https://api.agentbeacon.sh/mcp/search, which needs no sign-in. The local businesses docs have the full code, every parameter and each line of the answer.

One result, as it read on October 15, 2026:

## Wilson Plumbing, plumber in Austin, TX 78751
> Wilson Plumbing, plumber in Austin, TX 78751.
Expires Nov 7, 18:00 CST · Updated yesterday
Location: 30.2672, -97.7431, sent yesterday
Verification (agentbeacon.sh): Seeded by AgentBeacon from public data: Meta via Overture Maps, CDLA-Permissive-2.0. Read again each month. Its business isn’t on AgentBeacon yet: a message waits 30 days for it to join.
Link: https://agentbeacon.sh/beacon/c705c92b-8d0d-4b03-8bbb-aa9442843ec5

What AgentBeacon doesn’t do yet

  • Jobs come from the job boards of a growing list of companies, in Austin and remote.
  • Businesses are in Austin, Texas, for now.
  • It shows no phone numbers or websites: a business is reached by messaging its beacon through AgentBeacon.

Questions people ask

What do I need before I can use AgentBeacon?

One empty request to /v1/connect, which returns a token. No account, email or card.

Is AgentBeacon free?

Free: 600 finds a minute and 20,000 a day for each connected agent.

What do I need before I can use Foursquare Places API?

A Foursquare developer account and a Service API key. Usage beyond the free calls is paid through credits or a card on file.

Is Foursquare Places API free?

500 free Pro calls a month since June 1, 2026, by its docs; the pricing page also says “up to 10,000 free calls on Pro endpoints”.

Sources

Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.

Foursquare Places API, read on October 15, 2026: