# Categories > 63 categories in 13 areas, each ranked. Model APIs, agent frameworks, search, scraping, data providers, browsers, code, databases, work apps, CRM, observability, cloud, payment tools and payment protocols. - Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/ - Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/index.md (~5,800 tokens) - Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/index.min.md (~5,630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts) - JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/index.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json) - Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt) - API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json - Updated: 2026-10-04 ## Models & inference Model APIs, fast inference and routers. The brain, priced per token. - [Model APIs & inference](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/inference.md): 8 listings. Frontier and open-weight model APIs, fast inference hardware and routers that sit in front of many providers. Compared on price, context, tool use, data handling and how often models get retired under you. - [Embeddings & rerankers](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/embeddings.md): 7 listings. Models that turn text, images and code into vectors for search, and rerankers that reorder search results by relevance. Compared on retrieval quality, dimensions and context length, multilingual support and price per million tokens. - [Fine-tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/fine-tuning.md): 6 listings. Services that train a model on your examples, by supervised, preference or reinforcement fine-tuning, and serve the result. Compared on which base models you can tune, the methods, price per training token, whether you get the weights and what serving the result costs. - [GPU & serverless compute](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/gpu-compute.md): 9 listings. Clouds that run your own models and jobs on GPUs by the second, as serverless functions, endpoints or rented machines. Compared on GPU types and price per hour, cold starts, scaling and what you have to package. - [Guardrails & safety filters](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/guardrails.md): 9 listings. APIs and libraries that check what goes into and comes out of a model: prompt injection, jailbreaks, personal data, toxic content and off-policy answers. Compared on what they detect, false positives, the latency they add and where the data goes. - [Local AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/local-ai.md): 12 listings. Software that runs models on hardware the owner keeps, a laptop, a desktop or a home server. Model runners with a local API, chat apps, and personal assistants that work from the owner's own files, mail and records, with no cloud account needed. Compared on what models they run, what hardware they need, what leaves the machine, what an agent can call and the licence. - [Decision models](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/decision-models.md): 4 listings. Models that answer typed questions with probabilities instead of text, a yes or no, one label from a set or a level on a rubric, for routing, triage and checks inside agents and workflows. Compared on accuracy, calibration, context, latency, price and whether the weights are open. ## Content generation Models that make images, video and music, from the labs that train them and the platforms that host many. Priced per image, per second or per minute. - [Image generation](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/image-generation.md): 10 listings. Text-to-image and image editing models behind an API, from the labs that train them and the model platforms that host many of them. Compared on price per image, resolution, edit and reference-image support, text rendering, licence of the output and content rules. - [Video generation](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/video-generation.md): 10 listings. Text-to-video and image-to-video models behind an API. Compared on price per second of video, clip length, resolution, audio, how long a job takes to come back and what you're allowed to do with the output. - [Music generation](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/music-generation.md): 10 listings. Models that write music and sound from a prompt, behind an API. Direct providers and model platforms are listed side by side and labelled by kind. Compared on price per minute of audio, track length, stems, vocals, and the licence the output comes with. ## Voice & speech Speech-to-text, text-to-speech, voice agents, phone calling and custom voices. Listed per product, so one company can appear in several places. - [Speech-to-text](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/speech-to-text.md): 10 listings. APIs that turn audio into text, streaming or in batch. Compared on accuracy across accents, noise, names and overlapping speakers, streaming latency, languages, diarisation and cost per audio minute. - [Text-to-speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/text-to-speech.md): 10 listings. APIs that turn text into speech, streamed for live conversation or rendered for long-form audio. Compared on time to first audio, pronunciation, how natural it sounds, long-form consistency, languages and cost for a fixed script. - [Conversational voice agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/voice-agents.md): 10 listings. Platforms that run a spoken conversation for you, either with one speech-to-speech model or a configurable pipeline of speech-to-text, a language model and text-to-speech. Compared on response latency, handling interruptions, tool calls, recovery after a misunderstanding and cost per completed call. - [Phone calling & voice transport](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/voice-calling.md): 10 listings. The calling layer an agent connects to. Numbers, inbound and outbound calls, audio streaming over websockets or SIP, transfers and recordings. Compared on setup, webhook reliability, where numbers are available and the full cost of a call. - [Voice cloning & custom voices](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/voice-cloning.md): 10 listings. APIs that make a new voice from a sample, or design one from a description. Compared on how much audio a clone needs, how close it sounds, consent and verification checks, who owns the voice, and price. ## Agent frameworks The loop around the model. Tools, memory, hand-offs, approvals and tracing. - [Agent frameworks & SDKs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/frameworks.md): 6 listings. Libraries that run the agent loop. Tool calling, MCP, multi-agent hand-offs, durable state, human approval and tracing. Compared on what they do by default, including the telemetry they send. - [Agent harnesses](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/agent-harnesses.md): 10 listings. Finished programs that run the agent loop for a person or a pipeline, in a terminal, an editor or the vendor's cloud. They plan, call tools, edit files and run commands, where a framework is a library you build that loop with. Compared on what they ask before acting, what the sandbox and the network allow by default, MCP support, headless use and the telemetry they send. ## Agent runtime Where an agent's work runs and what it keeps: sandboxes for code, memory between sessions, the credentials it acts with, and a person to ask. - [Code execution sandboxes](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/code-sandboxes.md): 7 listings. Isolated machines an agent can start in seconds to run code, install packages and use a filesystem, then throw away. Compared on start time, isolation, how long a sandbox can live, what it costs per second and whether state can be paused and resumed. - [Agent memory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/agent-memory.md): 8 listings. Services that store what an agent learns about a user or a task and bring back the right parts later: facts, preferences, conversation summaries and knowledge graphs. Compared on recall quality, latency, what they keep and how you delete it. - [Agent auth & delegated access](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/agent-auth.md): 13 listings. Services that let an agent act for a user in other apps: OAuth flows and token storage for third-party APIs, scoped and revocable access, and an identity for the agent itself. Compared on the providers they cover, how consent works, token handling and audit logs. - [Secrets & credential vaults](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/secrets.md): 9 listings. Stores for API keys and other secrets that an agent or its runtime reads at call time, instead of keeping them in prompts, config files or environment dumps. Compared on access controls, rotation, audit, SDKs and self-hosting. - [Human approval & handoff](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/human-in-the-loop.md): 7 listings. Services that pause an agent to ask a person: approve an action, answer a question or take over a task, over Slack, email or a web inbox, then resume the agent with the answer. Compared on channels, routing, timeouts and audit. ## Web, data & documents Search, scraping, data providers, lead and company data, and the APIs that read documents and PDFs. - [Web search APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/search.md): 11 listings. Search engines, SERP APIs and research endpoints that give agents fresh knowledge of the web, plus the MCP servers that wrap them. Compared on price per 1,000 queries, freshness, whether results come back as snippets, full text or a written answer, and what the terms let you keep. - [Web scraping & crawling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/web-scrapers.md): 14 listings. Hosted APIs that fetch a page for you, render JavaScript and get past anti-bot checks through rotating proxies, then hand back HTML, Markdown or structured JSON. Also page-to-Markdown readers, crawlers and scraper marketplaces. Compared on price per successful request, success rate on protected sites and what the terms let you do with the output. - [Data providers](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/data-providers.md): 6 listings. Market, company, weather and reference data behind an API. Scored on the data as well as the API, meaning coverage, freshness, history, method, licence and official standing. - [Lead & company data](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/lead-data.md): 10 listings. APIs that find prospects, enrich people and companies, and find or verify email addresses. Search, enrichment and email verification are different jobs, so each listing says which it does and the Mode filter separates them. - [Document parsing & extraction](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/document-extraction.md): 10 listings. APIs that turn scans, PDFs, invoices and forms into text, tables and structured fields an agent can use. Compared on text accuracy, table structure, field extraction, page references, processing time and price per page. - [PDF tools](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/pdf-tools.md): 2 listings. APIs that merge, split, convert, fill, sign-ready and generate PDFs. Scored apart from structured extraction, because changing a PDF and reading one are different jobs. ## Domain data Data and services for particular jobs: travel search and booking, bank data, accounting and weather. - [Travel & booking](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/travel.md): 7 listings. APIs that search and book flights, hotels and other stays, with prices, availability, changes and cancellations. Compared on inventory, whether an agent can complete a booking, how payment is handled and what access needs. - [Bank data & open banking](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/banking-data.md): 7 listings. APIs that connect to a person's bank accounts with their consent to read balances and transactions, check identity and income, and start payments. Compared on country coverage, the consent flow, data freshness and price per connection. - [Accounting & invoicing](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/accounting.md): 8 listings. APIs for bookkeeping and invoicing: ledgers, invoices, bills, expenses and reports, straight from the accounting software or through one API across many. Compared on the objects covered, write access, sandboxes, rate limits and price. - [Weather & climate data](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/weather.md): 9 listings. APIs for current weather, forecasts, historical data and alerts, by coordinates. Compared on forecast range, historical depth, how often data updates, the terms of use and price per thousand calls. ## Developer & infrastructure Code hosts, browsers, databases and vector search, observability and agent evals, and cloud, exposed to agents. - [Code & developer platforms](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/code.md): 5 listings. Repository platforms, version control, and up-to-date library documentation delivered straight into the context window. - [Browser automation](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/browser.md): 4 listings. Servers that let an agent drive a real browser. Navigate, read accessibility trees, click, fill forms, capture traces and screenshots. - [Databases & files](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/data.md): 8 listings. SQL and document databases, managed backends, local file systems and persistent memory. - [Retrieval & vector search](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/vector-search.md): 10 listings. Databases an agent can query for retrieval, with vector, keyword and hybrid search. Compared on retrieval accuracy, filters, how fast an update becomes searchable, p95 latency, setup effort and cost at a stated corpus size, with hosted and self-hosted costs reported apart. - [Observability & incidents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/observability.md): 3 listings. Errors, metrics, logs, traces, monitors and on-call data for agents that debug and run production systems. - [Agent observability & evals](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/agent-observability.md): 10 listings. Tools that trace agent runs, tool calls and model calls, and run evaluations on them. Compared on what appears in a trace, how fast a failure can be found, whether an evaluation can be reproduced, setup time and cost. - [Cloud & infrastructure](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/infrastructure.md): 4 listings. Cloud provider and infrastructure-as-code servers for deploying, inspecting and documenting infrastructure. - [Reasoning scaffolds](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/reasoning.md): 1 listings. Tools that make no external calls and exist to structure an agent's own thinking. ## Communication Email, agent inboxes, SMS and WhatsApp, and social posting. How an agent reaches people and hears back. - [Email delivery APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/email.md): 9 listings. APIs that send application and transactional email, and often parse inbound mail by webhook. Compared on price per 1,000 emails, deliverability tooling (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, dedicated IPs), inbound handling, sandbox limits and what an agent needs before its first send. - [Agent inbox APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/agent-inboxes.md): 1 listings. APIs that give an agent its own email address, so it can send, receive replies and carry a thread on over days. Compared on how an inbox is created, how replies reach the agent (webhooks, websockets, polling), threading, custom domains and price per inbox. - [Messaging APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/messaging.md): 10 listings. APIs for SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, RCS and other customer messaging channels. Email and in-app chat are compared separately. Compared on price per message by country, channel coverage, sender registration (10DLC, WhatsApp business verification), inbound webhooks and what an agent needs before it can send its first message. - [Social media posting APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/social-media.md): 10 listings. APIs that publish and schedule posts across social networks from one call, and read back comments and analytics. Compared on which networks they reach, which of those need an app review or a business account, price per connected profile, media support, and whether you can host it yourself. ## Everyday APIs The plain APIs agents reach for all the time: maps and places, translation, calendars, notifications and file storage. - [Maps, geocoding & places](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/maps.md): 7 listings. APIs that turn addresses into coordinates and back, find places, and plan routes with travel times. Compared on coverage, accuracy, what the terms let you store and show, and price per thousand calls. - [Translation](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/translation.md): 7 listings. APIs that translate text and documents between languages, with glossaries, formality control and document formatting kept intact. Compared on quality in the languages you need, glossary support, data retention and price per million characters. - [Calendars & scheduling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/scheduling.md): 7 listings. APIs that read and write calendars across Google and Microsoft, find free time and book meetings, with booking pages and reminders. Compared on the providers covered, availability logic, webhooks and price per connected account. - [Notifications](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/notifications.md): 7 listings. APIs that send one message to a person across push, in-app, email, SMS and chat, with preferences, batching and delivery tracking. Compared on channels, workflow logic, user preferences and price per notification. - [File storage & sharing](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/file-storage.md): 9 listings. Object storage and file services an agent can put files in and share them from: S3-compatible buckets, and drives with folders, permissions and share links. Compared on price per gigabyte, egress fees, access controls and S3 compatibility. ## Design & diagrams Design canvases, programmatic image and asset production, and diagramming, exposed to agents. - [Design workspaces & canvases](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/design.md): 5 listings. Design tools and shared canvases an agent can read from and write to. Files, frames, components, variables, boards and comments. Compared on what the API can change as well as read, design-to-code support, MCP servers and how access is scoped. - [Programmatic asset production](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/design-assets.md): 5 listings. APIs that fill templates and render images, social graphics, banners, PDFs and video from data, or edit images in bulk. Compared on template tooling, output formats, render speed, price per render and what the licence lets you publish. - [Diagramming](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/diagramming.md): 10 listings. Tools an agent can use to draw architecture, flow and sequence diagrams, through a REST API, an MCP server, an SDK or a diagram-as-code format. Compared on how the diagram is described, whether it stays editable, export formats and what it costs. ## Work & business apps Work trackers, docs, CRM, support desks, commerce, workflow automation and the services that give agents actions across SaaS apps. - [Work & productivity](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/productivity.md): 4 listings. Issue trackers, wikis, knowledge bases and chat platforms exposed to agents, almost always behind OAuth and an organisation's existing permissions. - [CRM & customer platforms](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/crm.md): 10 listings. CRM platforms an agent can work in. Contacts, companies, deals, pipelines, activities and notes, behind an API and often an MCP server. Compared on how much of the record an agent can read and write, search, webhooks, rate limits, how access is scoped and price per seat. - [Customer support & helpdesk](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/support.md): 10 listings. Helpdesks and shared inboxes an agent can work in. Tickets, conversations, contacts, notes and statuses. Compared on permissions, safe handoff to a person, audit trail and API coverage. - [Commerce & checkout](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/commerce.md): 10 listings. Platforms with a programmable catalogue, cart, checkout and orders. Compared on API coverage, headless support, webhooks, how an agent can build a cart and check out, hosting model and price. - [Workflow automation](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/workflow-automation.md): 12 listings. Workflow builders an agent can trigger, inspect or build in, from no-code scenarios to code-first scripts and embedded integrations. Compared on connection setup, authorisation, action coverage, retries, logs and cost per completed run. - [Agent tool access](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/aggregator.md): 3 listings. Services that hand an agent ready-made actions across thousands of apps, with the OAuth connections and credentials handled for you. Compared on action coverage, how authorisation works per end user, what the agent sees in its context, logs and price per call. Workflow builders are compared separately. - [Company knowledge & data catalogues](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/company-knowledge.md): 8 listings. Systems that index what a company knows and holds, its documents, chats and tickets or its tables, pipelines and dashboards, so an agent can find the right one with its owner, its lineage and its permissions attached. Compared on what they connect to, whether they keep each source's access controls, what an agent can query and how they're hosted. ## Payments & protocols How agents pay and get paid. Pay-per-call and checkout protocols, agent wallets with spending limits, and the platforms that charge agents. - [Pay-per-call protocols](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/pay-per-call.md): 3 listings. Protocols where an API answers with a payment request, the agent pays and retries the call. x402, MPP and L402 compared on who governs them, what rails and assets they settle on, what a payment costs, how long settlement takes and what security researchers have found. - [Agent checkout protocols](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/checkout-protocols.md): 2 listings. Protocols for an agent buying goods or services on a person's behalf, with mandates that prove what the person approved. AP2 and ACP compared on governance, what a merchant has to build, how consent is captured and how disputes work. - [Agent wallets & spending controls](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/agent-wallets.md): 3 listings. Wallets and payment credentials an agent can hold, with limits a person sets. Compared on who holds the keys or funds, per-transaction and daily limits, allow-lists, chains and cards supported, and how an operator revokes access. - [Payment & monetisation platforms](https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/payment-platforms.md): 6 listings. Platforms that let builders charge agents, route payments between them or meter usage. Compared on fees, rails (cards, stablecoins, bank transfers), x402 and MPP support, settlement time and what an agent can do without a person in the loop.