29 free AI search tools. Half of the paid plans start at $20 a month or less. 8 are open source. Newest check: 12 Nov 2026.
268 of 721 tools were checked against the vendor's own page in the last 30 days.
| Tool | Price from | Free plan | Runs on | Rating | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google LensGoogle's AI-powered visual search tool that identifies objects, translates text in 100+ languages, matches products against the Shopping Graph, and provides homework help. Free on Android, iOS, and Chrome, with a Windows desktop app that launched in 2026. | Free | Yes | Web · iOS · Android · Windows | 4.4 | 28 Oct |
| Perplexity AIPerplexity AI answers from the live web with numbered citations and lets paid users pick among models from 6 AI labs; a limited free plan exists. | $17/mo | Yes | Web · iOS · Android · Mac · Windows | 4.4 | 22 Oct |
| AlgoliaAI search and retrieval platform powering 1.75 trillion searches annually for 18,000+ businesses with semantic search, vector embeddings, and AI agents. | -- | Yes | Web · iOS · Android · Mac · Windows | 4.0 | 3 Sep |
| BingMicrosoft's AI-powered search engine with Copilot integration, multi-turn search, and enterprise capabilities. Free consumer search; Copilot Search powered by OpenAI's Prometheus model. Enterprise Bing Chat is also available for teams. | $5/mo | Yes | Web · iOS · Android · Windows | 4.0 | 19 Aug |
| ExaSearch API that ranks the web by meaning for AI agents and retrieval pipelines, with Lite, Auto and Deep search modes, an asynchronous research Agent and an official MCP server. A free Starter plan with monthly credits needs no payment method. | $49/mo | Yes | Web | 4.0 | 12 Nov |
| ReductoAgentic document platform that parses, extracts and splits PDFs, scans and spreadsheets for AI teams; its About page cites more than 5 billion pages processed. | -- | Yes | Web | 3.9 | 12 Nov |
| AhrefsOwn-crawler SEO platform (AhrefsBot since 2013) covering backlinks, keywords, rank tracking and AI-answer visibility, with a free tier for verified sites. | $29/mo | Yes | Web | 3.8 | 19 Oct |
| Andi SearchAI search for the next generation: answers, not just links | Free | Yes | Web · iOS · Android | 3.6 | 4 Sep |
| LanceDBOpen-source embedded retrieval library with a distributed Enterprise lakehouse on the same Lance format; its GitHub repository shows 11.9k stars. | -- | Yes | Web | 3.6 | 12 Nov |
| Mem0Memory layer for AI agents: an Apache-2.0 SDK, a managed Platform and an MCP server, with a free plan and 68.8k GitHub stars. | -- | Yes | Web | 3.6 | 11 Nov |
| ZeroxZerox is a free, MIT-licensed library that turns PDFs and 26+ document formats into clean markdown using vision models like GPT-4o, though development appears to have stalled. | Free | Yes | -- | 3.2 | 18 Sep |
| PalmataPalmata is Contentful's AEO platform: a research agent that investigates why AI answer engines describe a brand as they do and recommends content changes, sold as a free one-time sample plus quote-only Enterprise. | -- | Yes | Web | 3.1 | 6 Nov |
| BrowserbaseHosted headless browsers for AI agents, with a free plan of 3 concurrent sessions, session replays and the open source Stagehand SDK. | $20/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 4 Oct |
| CiteLensCiteLens tracks brand and site citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, from a free-forever plan up to its top Agency tier. | $79/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 19 Aug |
| ConsensusAI-powered search engine for peer-reviewed research literature | $11.99/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 19 Aug |
| Context.devContext.dev scrapes pages to markdown, extracts brand assets, and crawls entire sites via one API. Free: 500 credits. Trusted by 5,000+ companies. | $49/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 19 Aug |
| DeeplakeActiveloop's open-source GPU database for AI agents: Postgres interface, multimodal data lake, SOC 2 Type II certified, Apache-licensed core. | $99/mo | Yes | Web · Mac · Windows | -- | 8 Oct |
| FirecrawlWeb data API for AI agents: search, scrape, crawl and interact, returning LLM-ready Markdown. Open source core with a free plan and an MCP server. | $16/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 3 Oct |
| Komo AIAI search engine that returns cited answers from the web, with deep research, people search and premium models on paid credit plans. | $20/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 2 Oct |
| LinerLiner is a Korean AI search and research assistant with line-by-line citations, 14 million registered users and a free plan. | $17.99/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 8 Oct |
| MarketMuseAI-powered content intelligence platform that tells you what to write and how much to rank higher where competitors are weak. | -- | Yes | Web | -- | 23 Sep |
| NuMindNuMind's NuExtract API pulls structured JSON from PDFs and scans, claiming a 9-point F-score edge over GPT-4.1 on its own extraction benchmark. | -- | Yes | Web | -- | 25 Aug |
| SeaOceanSEO audit platform with 75+ checks plus AI Search Optimization (GEO) tools, LLM visibility tracking, and llms.txt generation. Rated 4.8/5, with a free plan available. | $19/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 19 Aug |
| SemrushAdobe-owned SEO suite: keyword, backlink and rank data plus AI visibility tracking across 4 AI engines; a Free plan is available. | $139/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 19 Oct |
| SensoSenso is a YC-backed (W24) context layer that lets enterprises publish verified sources so ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity cite them correctly. | -- | Yes | Web | -- | 30 Aug |
| ShepherdFree book discovery platform with 3,500+ author-curated lists and AI Book DNA matching that connects readers with books matched to their personal taste, free forever. | $4.17/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 19 Aug |
| SpyTrendMedia buyers search SpyTrend's 1.1 billion-plus indexed Meta and TikTok advertising data, free on the Starter plan, with an MCP server for AI agents. | $63.20/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 17 Sep |
| TavilyFive-endpoint web access API for AI agents: search, extract, map, crawl and research, with a free plan and a keyless trial mode. | $30/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 3 Oct |
| You.comAI Search APIs & Infrastructure for Enterprise Teams | $20/mo | Yes | Web | -- | 20 Aug |
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