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: 35 tools in all, 34 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 172 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 16 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
LLM for Zotero Open source
Zotero plugin that adds a research agent to your library so you can ask questions about papers, compare sources and save notes without leaving the reader. · ★ 3,351
arXiv MCP Server Open source
MCP server for searching and reading arXiv papers. · ★ 3,221
Paper Search MCP Open source
MCP server and CLI that searches and downloads academic papers from arXiv, PubMed, bioRxiv, Semantic Scholar and other sources for research agents. · ★ 2,863

Web search

Search APIs and engines built for agents, returning clean results an LLM can use directly. All 17 tools →

xerj Open source
A local-first search engine and MCP server for agents: one Rust binary indexes code, docs, logs, CSV/JSONL and PDFs for full-text, vector and hybrid search plus agent memory, behind an Elasticsearch-compatible API. · ★ 11,507
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
AnySearch Freemium
A search MCP server and API for AI agents, covering real-time web search, vertical search and parallel batch queries with structured results and anonymous access. · ★ 2,029
MemFree Open source + cloud
Hybrid AI search engine that answers from your knowledge base and the web, and generates UI pages. · ★ 1,515
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

Scrape websites

Tools that turn websites into clean data or text an agent can use, from single pages to whole sites. All 19 tools →

Scrapling Open source
Python web-scraping framework with fast HTTP requests, stealth browsers, adaptive parsing and concurrent crawling, plus an MCP server for agents. · ★ 88,372
Crawl4AI Open source
Open-source crawler that turns websites into clean, LLM-ready Markdown for agents and RAG pipelines. · ★ 85,667
ScrapeGraphAI Open source + cloud
Python library that uses LLMs and graph logic to build scraping pipelines: describe the data you want and it extracts it from websites or documents. · ★ 31,882
Moli Open source
Lightweight Rust headless browser for AI agents that fetches pages, searches and extracts content, usable via CLI, CDP or WebDriver. · ★ 19,349
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
Treg Usage-based
Single endpoint and token that lets agents call a catalog of third-party APIs for SEO, social data, enrichment, scraping and media generation, priced per call. · ★ 5,806

Work with documents

Tools that let agents read, search and answer questions over your documents and files. All 62 tools →

MarkItDown Open source
Microsoft's Python tool and MCP server that converts PDFs, Office documents, images, audio and web pages to Markdown for LLM and agent pipelines. · ★ 190,824
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
Understand-Anything Open source
Turns any codebase, knowledge base or docs folder into an interactive knowledge graph you can explore and question, working inside Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot and Gemini CLI. · ★ 87,175
AnythingLLM Open source + cloud
Local-first desktop and server app for chatting with your documents, running agents and connecting any LLM. · ★ 67,210
PPT Master Open source
AI tool that turns documents or topics into native, editable PowerPoint decks with real shapes, charts, transitions and narration from speaker notes. · ★ 63,293

Analyze data

Agents that query, clean and chart data and explain what it shows. All 71 tools →

Paperclip Open source
Self-hosted app for running a team of AI agents like a small company, with org charts, goals, budgets and approval gates across Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw and other harnesses. · ★ 103,425
PPT Master Open source
AI tool that turns documents or topics into native, editable PowerPoint decks with real shapes, charts, transitions and narration from speaker notes. · ★ 63,293
OpenViking Open source
Context database for AI agents that keeps memory, knowledge and skills in one inspectable virtual filesystem agents can navigate. · ★ 40,217
Tabby Open source + cloud
Self-hosted AI coding assistant that offers an on-premises alternative to GitHub Copilot with no database or cloud service required. · ★ 33,913
Chroma Open source + cloud
Open-source search and vector database widely used for agent memory and RAG. · ★ 29,512
Teable Open source + cloud
AI spreadsheet and database for business with built-in agents. · ★ 21,892