Research · List
Market research tools, honestly compared.
The real divide isn't price — it's whether the tool returns numbers your agent can compute against, or pages a human has to read. Here's where each category lands, including ours.
The comparison
Four options, four tradeoffs.
Agent-native research
StartupKit
Market research as MCP tools and a CLI — keywords, SERP, trends, domains, app stores. Your agent calls them and reasons over structured output. Free plan, Pro at $28/mo.
Explore StartupKit ResearchSEO dashboards
Ahrefs / Semrush
The biggest keyword and backlink datasets, built for humans clicking through reports. Powerful, expensive (~$100+/mo), and your agent can't use them natively — you're the integration layer.
Free, manual
Google Trends + Keyword Planner
Free and accurate for relative interest. No API meant for agents; your agent reads the same charts you do — through StartupKit's trends and keywords tools, which wrap them programmatically.
Qualitative
Reviews + communities
G2, Reddit, and app-store reviews tell you what users hate about incumbents. Not a dataset — but the cheapest real market signal there is. Pair with StartupKit's app-store tools for the numbers behind the complaints.
Disclosure: StartupKit is ours. We're honest about the tradeoff — our datasets are smaller than Ahrefs'; the difference is your agent can call ours directly.
Test it against your own dashboard.
Free plan, monthly credits — run the same research on both and compare what your agent gets to work with.