The open-source NotebookLM alternative for open web research.
SurfSense is the open-source NotebookLM alternative for AI agents, an open web research platform with live data connectors. Your AI agents research the live web with structured data from Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, Google Maps, Google Search, and any page on the open web.
Deep Research on the Live Web
The agent crawls dozens of live sources on a question and synthesizes a cited answer, not a stale index.
Used by people at
Loved across the internet
Connectors for every platform where answers live
8 connectors and growingEach connector is a platform-native REST API. Call it from your own app with your SurfSense API key, or hand it to your agents through the SurfSense MCP server. Live data in, structured intelligence out.
Reddit API
The SurfSense Reddit API extracts posts, comments, subreddits, and user data without the official Reddit API's rate limits or per-call pricing. Give your AI agents a live feed of what Reddit actually says about any brand, product, or topic, so you hear it first.
ExploreYouTube API
The SurfSense YouTube API pulls videos, channel stats, comments, and transcripts at scale, without YouTube Data API quotas. Feed your AI agents every comment and transcript that matters to your research, so you know what audiences actually think about any product, topic, or channel.
ExploreInstagram API
The SurfSense Instagram scraper extracts public profiles, posts, and reels without logging in or registering for the Instagram Graph API. Give your AI agents a live feed of what creators post, so you spot trends and shifts in engagement first.
ExploreTikTok API
The SurfSense TikTok scraper extracts public videos by hashtag, creator profile, or URL, plus comment threads and trending feeds, without TikTok's approval-gated Research API. Give your AI agents a live feed of what people watch and share, so you catch a trend while it is still rising.
ExploreGoogle Maps API
The SurfSense Google Maps API turns Maps into a B2B lead engine. Extract business names, categories, phones, websites, ratings, and reviews at scale, then point your AI agents at any territory or category to build lead lists and map any local category in minutes.
ExploreSERP API
The SurfSense SERP API scrapes Google Search results as structured JSON: organic rankings, paid ads, AI Overviews, and People Also Ask. Point your AI agents at the queries you care about and know the moment a rank moves, an ad appears, or an AI answer changes its sources.
ExploreAmazon Product API
The SurfSense Amazon Product API scrapes public Amazon listings as structured JSON: price and list price, rating and review breakdown, availability, marketplace offers, sellers, best-seller ranks, and on-page reviews. Point your AI agents at a search term or product URL and track prices across US, UK, German, Italian, and Spanish marketplaces — no login, only public data.
ExploreWeb Crawl API
The SurfSense Web Crawl API points your AI agents at any URL and returns clean, LLM-ready markdown, structured links, and harvested contacts. Scrape a single page or spider a whole site, with the same agent harness that powers our platform connectors.
ExploreHow SurfSense compares
SurfSense is the only open-source product that combines a NotebookLM-style research workspace for people with live-data primitives for agents. Here is how that stacks up against each class of tool.
| Feature | Browser agentsBrowserbase, Browser Use | Scraping APIsFirecrawl | Search APIsExa, Tavily, Parallel | Scraper marketplacesApify | SurfSense |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Web tasks that need clicking, logins, and forms | Turning individual pages into LLM-ready content | Finding and reading pages about a topic | Thousands of community-built scrapers, one per site | Live platform data as research primitives for agents |
| How retrieval works | An LLM drives a real browser, page by page | Fetch a URL, get markdown or schema-extracted JSON | Query an index, get ranked results and page content | Pick an actor per site, learn its input, run it | One typed REST call per platform, no LLM in the retrieval loop |
| Platform data (comment trees, transcripts, reviews) | Whatever the LLM extracts from rendered pages | Page-level extraction; social platforms aren't the focus | Page text and snippets, not structured platform items | Yes, but schema and quality vary per actor | Native items: posts, comment trees, transcripts, reviews, SERPs |
| Consistency | Depends on the model and the page | One API, you define schemas per page type | One API, snippet and page-content shapes | A different schema and quality bar per actor | One API and one schema style across every connector |
| Research workspace & knowledge base | No | No | No | No | Cited briefs, knowledge base, scheduled automations, deliverables |
| Pricing | Per browser minute (1-minute session minimum) plus the LLM tokens driving it | Credits per page; schema extraction costs extra credits | Per search request | Per event or result, set by each actor | Per item returned; failed calls never billed |
Frequently asked questions
Open source, built in public
No CI incumbent can show you its code. SurfSense can. Star the repository, join the community, or self-host the whole platform. Start free, no credit card required.
SurfSenseSurfSense