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

AgentBeacon vs TomTom Search API for AI agents

TomTom Search API is a family of TomTom location search APIs: the Orbis-based Places Search API (Suggest, Discover, Details) is now recommended, and the older Search API is labelled previous-generation. 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

TomTom Search API: Navigation-grade POI search with a real no-card free tier and EU-priced pay-as-you-go. Strong in automotive and routing contexts.
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.

TomTom Search API and AgentBeacon, side by side

	TomTom Search API	AgentBeacon
Searches	Addresses and points of interest (POIs) on TomTom Orbis Maps, or on TomTom Maps for the legacy Search API.	Hiring beacons from employers’ own job boards (Austin, Texas, and remote) and home-service businesses around Austin
Returns	JSON (Discover returns a results array). POI results include a title, address, GeoJSON position, poiTypes (categories), contacts (phones and websites) and opening hours.	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	A free TomTom developer account and API key. No credit card is needed until you add prepaid credit.	One empty request to /v1/connect, which returns a token. No account, email or card.
Free	Places Search API: 5,000 Discover and 5,000 Details requests a month, plus 10,000 Suggest. Legacy Search API: 2,500 a month. The free tier does not expire.	Free: 600 finds a minute and 20,000 a day for each connected agent
Paid	Places Search API Discover costs EUR 18.00 per 1,000 (5K–100K), Details EUR 12.00 per 1,000 and Suggest EUR 1.00 per 1,000. The legacy Search API costs EUR 3.00 per 1,000 (2.5K–100K). Billing is prepaid credit.	Free for agents
Acting on a result	Discover results can include phone numbers and websites. 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 results	Caching or storing Results is prohibited except in clients, within cache-control header max-age. Caching to serve multiple users is not allowed. Logo and copyright attribution is required.	Agents read beacons and message them; the terms say reading one doesn’t give the right to reuse it freely.
AI in its terms	The Portal Terms forbid applying ML or AI to the Licensed Products in a way that makes them redundant. They also forbid using them with any ML/AI process where the information would be stored in a "Public Reference Data Set".	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	The market list (search on TomTom Orbis Maps) marks POI coverage per country, including the United States. TomTom says markets not listed are not supported.	Hiring in Austin, Texas, and remote; home services around Austin, for now
MCP server	TomTom Maps MCP Server, remote at https://mcp.tomtom.com/maps (public preview). Open source at https://github.com/tomtom-international/tomtom-maps-mcp	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 TomTom Search API?

A free TomTom developer account and API key. No credit card is needed until you add prepaid credit.

Is TomTom Search API free?

Places Search API: 5,000 Discover and 5,000 Details requests a month, plus 10,000 Suggest. Legacy Search API: 2,500 a month. The free tier does not expire.

Sources

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

TomTom Search API, read on October 15, 2026:

docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “Places Search API Discover ... Free Up to 5K Tier 1 5K–100K € 18.00”
docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “Search API Serve search results using TomTom's previous-generation map format. For new projects we recommend Places Search API.”
docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “Free Up to 2.5K Tier 1 2.5K–100K € 3.00”
docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “The more you use, the less you pay per 1,000 requests”
docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “Free means free — no time limit, no credit card required.”
docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “You only need a payment method when you're ready to add prepaid credit and go beyond the free monthly allowance.”
docs.tomtom.com/places-search-api/documentation/places-search/discover: “Delivers fully resolved location or discoverAction results based on complete input criteria.”
docs.tomtom.com/legal/terms-and-conditions: “The caching or storing of any Results shall be prohibited except that you may cache Results delivered by the Licensed Products provided that”
docs.tomtom.com/legal/terms-and-conditions: “Nothing under Clause 11.4 entitles any form of caching for the purpose of scaling results to serve multiple clients or users.”
docs.tomtom.com/legal/terms-and-conditions: “you agree to implement to the TomTom Copyright API in order to generate the applicable copyright and logo attribution”
docs.tomtom.com/legal/terms-and-conditions: “would be stored or retained in any Public Reference Data Set by such machine learning, AI algorithm or other software related process”
docs.tomtom.com/tomtom-maps-mcp/documentation/overview: “The TomTom Maps Remote MCP Server is in public preview.”
docs.tomtom.com/search-api/documentation/tomtom-orbis-maps/product-information/market-coverage: “If a market is missing in the following tables, it is not currently supported.”