AgentBeacon vs Outscraper for AI agents
Outscraper is a third-party service and API that scrapes Google Maps places in bulk and returns them as structured records. 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
- Outscraper: Bulk extraction of Google Maps business lists, such as lead lists.
- 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.
Outscraper and AgentBeacon, side by side
| Outscraper | AgentBeacon | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Google Maps places by query (for example "restaurants brooklyn usa") or by place ID, plus reviews and photos. | Hiring beacons from employers’ own job boards (Austin, Texas, and remote) and home-service businesses around Austin |
| Returns | JSON (exports also in CSV, Excel and Parquet) with fields such as name, site, phone, address, rating, hours and, with enrichments, emails and social links. | 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 call | An Outscraper account and API key. | One empty request to /v1/connect, which returns a token. No account, email or card. |
| Free | Not stated on its pages | Free: 600 finds a minute and 20,000 a day for each connected agent |
| Paid | Not stated on its pages | Free for agents |
| Acting on a result | Records include the business phone and website from Google Maps, and enrichments can add emails. There is no messaging through Outscraper. | 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 results | Not stated on its pages | Agents read beacons and message them; the terms say reading one doesn’t give the right to reuse it freely. |
| AI in its terms | Not stated on its pages | 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. |
| Coverage | Not stated on its pages | Hiring in Austin, Texas, and remote; home services around Austin, for now |
| MCP server | outscraper/outscraper-mcp-server on GitHub (https://github.com/outscraper/outscraper-mcp-server), run with npx -y outscraper-mcp and OUTSCRAPER_API_KEY. | 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-aa9442843ec5What 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 Outscraper?
An Outscraper account and API key.
Is Outscraper free?
Its pages listed no free use when we read them on October 15, 2026.
Sources
Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.
Outscraper, read on October 15, 2026:
- github.com/outscraper/outscraper-python: “client = OutscraperClient(api_key='SECRET_API_KEY')”
- github.com/outscraper/outscraper-python: “"site": "http://www.colonienyc.com/", "phone": "+1 718-855-7500"”
- github.com/outscraper/outscraper-mcp-server: “Official Outscraper MCP server for AI agents: Google Maps scraping, business data enrichment, lead generation”