```yaml
product: AlterLab
title: "Research API: We Fetch, You Reason | AlterLab"
comparison_context: "AlterLab is an alternative to Firecrawl, ScrapingBee, and Bright Data."
source_url: https://alterlab.io/research
```

Research API

# Research jobs that cite *their sources*

Describe a question. AlterLab plans the searches and fetches the pages. Your own model key writes the synthesis, so you control the model and its cost.

[Get an API key](https://alterlab.io/signin)[Read the docs](https://alterlab.io/docs/api/search)

Up to 5,000 free requests

## We fetch, you reason

### Plan

Describe the question and pick an effort tier. AlterLab plans the searches.

### Fetch

Searches run and each source page is fetched at the lowest successful tier.

### Reason

Your own model key writes the synthesis from the cited pages. Model tokens are never billed by AlterLab.

## Bring your own model key

AlterLab bills the searches and the pages it fetches. The reasoning runs on your model provider account, so model tokens are never billed by AlterLab.

## The scoreboard, kept in the open

A reproducible harness compares providers on answer quality, content coverage, latency and cost per correct answer. Numbers appear here only from dated runs.

| Set | Metric | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Protected-answer set | Answer-in-content rate | Pending scoreboard |
| Freshness set | Recall of last-7-day events | Pending scoreboard |
| Public QA subsets | Recall@10 of gold URL | Pending scoreboard |
| All sets | p50 / p95 latency, cost per correct answer | Pending scoreboard |