Parallel (AI-agent web search & deep research API)
Parallel
Sign up and get up to $80 in one-time credit (no card required); add a card and you also get $5/month in free credits
The official pricing page and blog post (parallel.ai/pricing, parallel.ai/blog/free-tier-parallel, verified 2026-08-30) confirm: new users get up to $80 in one-time credit on signup (the official text says 'up to $80'; the exact tiering rules aren't disclosed), and neither signing up nor claiming it requires a credit card. There's also a $5/month free allowance — the official blog states verbatim 'every eligible Parallel organization with a credit card receives $5 in free credits each month,' meaning a card must be on file for it to be granted automatically; each eligible organization gets one per month, and any unused balance doesn't carry over ('any unused balance expires at the end of the month'). The pricing page shows the Search API starting at $0.001/call at its cheapest tier (up to 10 results per call; pricier tiers go up to $0.005/call), and the Task API spans 9 tiers from lite to ultra8x, with the cheapest lite tier at roughly $5 per 1000 calls. The '5000 calls/month' figure that circulates online is just that same $5 converted at the Search API's cheapest per-call rate (or roughly 1000 calls if converted via the Task API's lite tier) — it's the same $5 priced out across different product lines/tiers, not an extra benefit on top of it.
A web search and deep-research API provider built for AI agents, with a product line spanning Search, Extract, Task, Responses, Monitor, FindAll, and Entity Search — priced per request rather than per token. The company is Parallel Web Systems, Inc., founded in 2023 by Parag Agrawal after he left his role as Twitter/X CEO. There's also a free, key-less MCP version of Search — the official docs state verbatim 'Free. No account, no API key. Works in every major coding agent' — that plugs directly into mainstream coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and VS Code (with some rate limiting); it's a separate mechanism from the account-level free credits. The pricing page also has a dedicated startup application track — the official text states 'Qualified startups can receive up to $250 in free credits' — which requires filling out a form and is not part of the standing free allowance described above. The official terms of service don't carve out an exclusion for mainland China, but connectivity from mainland China wasn't tested in this verification pass — test it yourself before relying on it.