AgentScout / By role / Researchers

AI agents for researchers (2026)

Research agents, paper readers, search APIs and scrapers that find, read and cite sources for you. We picked the top tools for 6 jobs researchers do every day: 31 tools in all, 31 of them free or with a free tier.

Jump to: Research · Read scientific papers · Web search · Scrape websites · Work with documents · Analyze data

Free tools from AgentScout for researchers: Token counter · Prompt builder

How we picked: each section takes the tools matched to that task in our directory, putting tools whose category and stated use cases fit the task first, then ordering by tracked GitHub stars. No paid placements.

Research

Agents that search, read many sources and come back with a cited answer or report. All 89 tools →

Hermes Agent (Nous Research) Open source
Open-source agent harness; v0.21.7 stable shipped Oct 12, v0.22.0 RCs Oct 13-14. · ★ 253,590
Agent-Reach Open source
Lets an AI agent read and search sites like X, Reddit, YouTube and GitHub through one toolkit, without paid APIs. · ★ 98,176
Deer Flow Open source
ByteDance's open-source long-horizon agent harness that researches, codes and creates using sandboxes, memory and sub-agents. · ★ 83,959
Vane Open source
Open-source AI answering engine that searches the web and replies with sources, self-hostable. · ★ 37,364
STORM Open source
Stanford system that writes Wikipedia-style articles from web research. · ★ 31,627
GPT Researcher Open source
Autonomous agent that researches the web and writes cited reports. · ★ 30,082

Read scientific papers

Research assistants for academic work: finding papers, summarizing them and extracting findings. All 9 tools →

DeepCode Open source
Open agentic coding system that turns papers and specs into code with multi-agent orchestration. · ★ 16,717
Feynman Open source
Open-source research agent that searches, reads papers and writes cited reports. · ★ 9,976
OpenScience Open source
Research agent workbench that reads the literature, writes and runs code and experiments and logs every step, with skills and connectors for databases like PubMed, UniProt and arXiv. · ★ 4,043
arXiv MCP Server Open source
MCP server for searching and reading arXiv papers. · ★ 3,221
ToolUniverse Open source
Harvard's collection of scientific tools for AI scientist agents. · ★ 1,744
Hugging Face MCP Server Open source
Hugging Face's MCP server connecting agents to the Hub's models, datasets, papers and Gradio Spaces. · ★ 304

Web search

Search APIs and engines built for agents, returning clean results an LLM can use directly. All 6 tools →

Wigolo Open source
Local-first web search, fetch and crawl for coding agents over MCP, with no API keys. · ★ 5,479
Bright Data MCP Open source + cloud
Bright Data's MCP server for web search, scraping and browsing. · ★ 2,678
Brave Search MCP Open source
Brave's official MCP server for web, image, video, news and local search through the Brave Search API. · ★ 1,504
SearXNG MCP Open source
MCP server for private web search through SearXNG. · ★ 1,312
Linkup MCP Open source
Linkup's MCP server for real-time, source-backed web search. · ★ 29
Exa Freemium
Search API built for AI agents.

Scrape websites

Tools that turn websites into clean data or text an agent can use, from single pages to whole sites. All 8 tools →

Crawl4AI Open source
Open-source crawler that turns websites into clean, LLM-ready Markdown for agents and RAG pipelines. · ★ 85,667
Apify MCP Server Open source + cloud
Apify's MCP server giving agents access to thousands of scrapers for social media, search and maps. · ★ 11,578
Wigolo Open source
Local-first web search, fetch and crawl for coding agents over MCP, with no API keys. · ★ 5,479
Spider Open source + cloud
Fast Rust web crawler for collecting data for agents and LLMs. · ★ 2,784
Bright Data MCP Open source + cloud
Bright Data's MCP server for web search, scraping and browsing. · ★ 2,678
ScrapeGraph MCP Open source
ScrapeGraphAI's MCP server for AI-powered web scraping. · ★ 115

Work with documents

Tools that let agents read, search and answer questions over your documents and files. All 24 tools →

Graphify Open source
Turns a codebase plus its docs, SQL schemas, configs and PDFs into a knowledge graph that coding agents can query. · ★ 127,237
RAGFlow Open source + cloud
Open-source RAG engine with deep document parsing and agent features for building grounded question-answering over your files. · ★ 92,335
Crawl4AI Open source
Open-source crawler that turns websites into clean, LLM-ready Markdown for agents and RAG pipelines. · ★ 85,667
AnythingLLM Open source + cloud
Local-first desktop and server app for chatting with your documents, running agents and connecting any LLM. · ★ 67,210
Context7 Freemium
MCP server and platform that feeds coding agents up-to-date, version-specific library documentation. · ★ 63,157
LlamaIndex Open source + cloud
Framework for agents over your data (RAG, document agents). · ★ 52,485

Analyze data

Agents that query, clean and chart data and explain what it shows. All 42 tools →

Graphify Open source
Turns a codebase plus its docs, SQL schemas, configs and PDFs into a knowledge graph that coding agents can query. · ★ 127,237
LlamaIndex Open source + cloud
Framework for agents over your data (RAG, document agents). · ★ 52,485
MindsHub Open source + cloud
MindsDB's agent workspace for research, analysis, documents and coding, with a model router, a scoped vault for connected data and swappable open-source agent harnesses. · ★ 39,800
Teable Open source + cloud
AI spreadsheet and database for business with built-in agents. · ★ 21,892
DB-GPT Open source
Open-source agentic data assistant for querying and analyzing data with LLMs. · ★ 20,156
WrenAI Open source + cloud
Generative BI for agents: governed text-to-SQL with a semantic context layer. · ★ 17,881