The Hog
One API for live web intelligence: search, enrich, and monitor the web for AI agents.
The Hog is a pragmatic bet for AI engineers who want fresh, structured web context in agents without assembling a five-vendor stack. The per-call pricing is transparent and the free tier is generous, though the absence of a no-code UI and documented integrations limits it to technical buyers. For agent builders it's a strong fit; non-technical teams should stick with Clay or Apollo.
Verified 1d ago · liveness 66/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/the-hog
- AI engineers building agent-based automations that need live web context in structured JSON
- GTM teams requiring real-time intelligence on companies and people without stitching tools
- Growth operators conducting live market research on funding, hiring, and sentiment
- Sales teams enriching lead data at scale via a single API with spend caps
- Non-technical users who need a no-code dashboard or visual UI
- Teams that rely on static, historical-only data and don't need freshness
- Users expecting free unlimited access (500 free calls/month cap)
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Skip The Hog if you need a no-code dashboard or native integrations with your CRM or workflow tools, or if you're not comfortable writing API calls and handling JSON responses.
LinkedIn scraping is $16.43 per 1k calls, so heavy profile enrichment can get pricey fast.
The Hog's usage-based pricing is ideal for AI engineers and startups that want to pay only for what they use, with a generous 500 free calls monthly and automatic volume discounts past 100k. Compared to Clay or Apollo's per-seat subscriptions, The Hog's metered model can be cheaper for low-volume or spiky usage, but for high-volume continuous enrichment, a flat subscription might be more predictable. The transparent per-call rates and spend caps make it safer for agent experiments.
In short
The Hog — One API for live web intelligence: search, enrich, and monitor the web for AI agents. Best for AI engineers building agent-based automations that need live web context in structured JSON, GTM teams requiring real-time intelligence on companies and people without stitching tools, Growth operators conducting live market research on funding, hiring, and sentiment. Free to use.
What's new in The Hog
Checked yesterdayAcross the latest 2 updates: 1 feature update and 1 launch.
Structured web context for AI agents
Engineering guide on turning live web signals into reliable, structured intelligence for research and GTM workflows.
Introducing the The Hog API
Announcement of The Hog API, a one-API solution for structured context across people, companies, social, and the open web.
What people actually say about The Hog — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
54 mentions across 4 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, App Store, Lemmy) · researched Aug 6, 2026.
- +Unified API replaces multiple point tools simplifying integration workflows
- +Structured JSON with confidence scores ideal for LLM reasoning
- +Broad coverage across people, companies, web, social, and scraping
- +Flat per-call pricing with free 500 calls monthly offers predictability
- +Source attribution and freshness timestamps enhance data trustworthiness
- −No direct user reviews or testimonials to validate claims
- −Beta-stage may have reliability and uptime issues
- −LinkedIn scraping cost is steep at $16.43 per 1k calls
- −Volume discounts only start past 100k calls limiting small teams
- −Coverage of social platforms beyond X, Reddit, TikTok is unclear
- • High-cost endpoints like LinkedIn scraping may surprise
- • Overages if spend caps not configured properly
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is The Hog? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: August 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Company search: firmographics, tech stack, signals
- People search by role, seniority, company
- Web search with live crawling
- Social search across X, Reddit, TikTok
- Verified email enrichment
- Verified mobile enrichment
- Web scraping for any public URL
- LinkedIn profile and company scraping
- Social scraping for Instagram, TikTok
- Image deepfake detection
- Deep research with multi-hop LLM reasoning
- Monitoring runs with 1k checks per call
- Structured JSON output with source attribution and freshness timestamps
- Confidence scoring and entity resolution
- Spend caps to prevent runaway agent costs
About The Hog
The Hog is a unified web intelligence API that delivers real-time, structured context to AI agents. It replaces the usual patchwork of Exa, Clay, Apollo, search APIs, and custom scrapers with a single endpoint that resolves a company, person, domain, keyword, or research task by visiting live sources and returning one clean JSON object. Built for AI engineers and go-to-market teams, it consolidates people, company, social, news, and sentiment data with source attribution, freshness timestamps, and confidence scores. The API covers a wide range of endpoints: company search (firmographics, tech stack, signals), people search by role and seniority, web search with live crawling, social search across X, Reddit, and TikTok, verified email and mobile enrichment, web and LinkedIn scraping, social scraping, image deepfake detection, deep research with multi-hop LLM reasoning, and monitoring runs. Every response is structured for LLM reasoning, with ranked signals and confidence scores, so agents can act on the data instead of parsing HTML. Pricing is usage-based with no tiers or seats: 500 free calls each month, flat per-call rates per endpoint, automatic volume discounts past 100k calls, and spend caps to control runaway agent costs. The API is in beta with a waitlist, backed by Y Combinator, and positioned as a replacement for five data vendors while offering fresher, more structured outputs. For teams needing live web context at scale, The Hog offers transparent metered pricing and agent-ready outputs. Compared to building custom pipelines or stitching tools like Clay and Apollo, it simplifies the path to production agents that reason over fresh, structured data.
Behind the Verdict
The Hog positions itself as a one-stop web intelligence API, and based on the scrape, it delivers on that promise for technical teams. The core value is the single JSON output with ranked signals, freshness timestamps, and confidence scores — exactly what LLM agents need to reason over live data without parsing HTML. The endpoint coverage is broad: company, people, web, social, enrichment, scraping, deepfake detection, deep research, and monitoring. That's a lot of capability in one API. Strengths: The API-first design is clean — you send a company, person, or keyword, and get back a structured object with sources and ages. The free 500 calls per month is a generous start, and the metered pricing with automatic volume discounts and spend caps is agent-friendly; a runaway loop can't blow a budget. The Y Combinator backing adds credibility. The chat-like demo on the homepage shows how a funding research agent would work, highlighting the multi-source verification and confidence scoring. Weaknesses: It's API-only with no web UI, so non-technical users are locked out. The waitlist for beta access may delay immediate use. There are no documented integrations (Slack, Zapier, etc.) yet, so you'll need to build your own connectors. Some endpoints are pricey — LinkedIn scraping at $16.43 per 1k calls and image deepfake detection at $8.13 per 1k, which could add up. Deep research is metered from $0.08 per call, which is hard to estimate. Where it fits: AI engineers building agent automations that need live web context in structured JSON — lead enrichment, competitor monitoring, market research, social listening. GTM teams that are comfortable with code and want to avoid stitching multiple vendors. Growth operators doing live research on funding, hiring, and sentiment. Where it doesn't: Non-technical users who need a dashboard. Teams that rely on static historical data. Users expecting unlimited free access. Projects that can tolerate stale or unstructured data. If you need a no-code workflow builder or native integrations with your CRM, stick with Clay or Apollo.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas The Hog actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
The agent needs to research and screen companies for fit before sending emails.
Outcome: You call the company search endpoint with a list of target domains. The Hog returns structured data on funding, headcount, hiring, and news, each with source and freshness. Your agent uses this to score leads and prioritize outreach, all with one API call per company.
You want real-time alerts on competitor funding, product launches, and sentiment.
Outcome: Set up a monitoring run that checks key competitor domains and keywords daily. Each run returns ranked signals, and you get a JSON object that triggers your internal alerts or feeds a dashboard. The 1k checks per call covers a large list efficiently.
You need to synthesize trends from social and news for a report.
Outcome: Use the social search and deep research endpoints to pull recent posts and news around a topic. The Hog returns a structured summary with sentiment scores and source URLs, which you can drop directly into your report or use to automate a research bot.
Use Cases
- Enrich CRM leads with live company headcount, funding, and hiring signals.
- Monitor competitor news and sentiment in real time for market intelligence.
- Build an AI agent that researches and screens companies for outbound sales.
- Automate verification of email and mobile contacts for outreach campaigns.
- Detect deepfake images in user-generated content or candidate profiles.
- Aggregate social media signals to gauge brand sentiment and emerging trends.
Limitations
- The Hog is an API-only platform with no web UI, requiring developers or teams who can programmatically integrate.
- Pricing is usage-based; while the first 500 calls per month are free, costs can scale with volume (e.g., LinkedIn scraping at $16.43 per 1k calls).
- Deep research is metered from $0.08 per call, and some endpoints like email enrichment are pay-per-match.
- The platform is in beta with a waitlist, so immediate access may be delayed.
- There are no documented integrations or no-code connectors yet.
as of 2026-08-24
Verification history
We have re-verified The Hog 5 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published The Hog tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0/mo
Ideal for
Developers and startups evaluating The Hog; you get 500 calls per month to test all endpoints without a credit card.
What this tier adds
Starting tier: 500 free calls per month across all endpoints, no credit card required.
Usage-based
Per call
Ideal for
Production AI agents and GTM teams that have predictable call volumes; you pay per call with automatic volume discounts past 100k calls.
What this tier adds
Metered per-call pricing with rates per endpoint; volume discounts apply automatically past 100k calls and spend caps are available.
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Large enterprises needing custom data sources, dedicated capacity, and compliance support like SSO/SAML and DPA.
What this tier adds
Adds custom data sources, dedicated capacity, SSO/SAML, RBAC, security review, DPA, professional services, uptime SLAs, and committed-use pricing.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where The Hog's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
The Hog's usage-based pricing is ideal for AI engineers and startups that want to pay only for what they use, with a generous 500 free calls monthly and automatic volume discounts past 100k. Compared to Clay or Apollo's per-seat subscriptions, The Hog's metered model can be cheaper for low-volume or spiky usage, but for high-volume continuous enrichment, a flat subscription might be more predictable. The transparent per-call rates and spend caps make it safer for agent experiments.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of The Hog — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
For a developer, you can get your first successful API call in under 15 minutes after getting waitlist approval, thanks to the interactive docs and ready-to-use curl example. The free 500 calls let you test all endpoints immediately. Non-technical users will face a steep learning curve, but the docs and engineering guide help.
Switching to or from The Hog
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Exa: Replace your Exa searches with The Hog's web search and company search, which also returns structured signals, freshness, and confidence scores.
- →From Clay/Apollo: Use The Hog's company and people search for live enrichment, but note you'll need to build your own workflows since there's no no-code UI.
- ↗To Clay or Apollo: If you need a no-code UI and native CRM integrations, you can export your enriched data and import it into those platforms.
- ↗To a custom pipeline: The Hog's per-call pricing may be replaced by your own scraping stack if you have the infrastructure to maintain it.
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
Official links
Tools that pair well with The Hog
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside The Hog, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Olostep
Web data API for scraping, crawling, search, and monitoring — built for AI agents.
Xpoz MCP
Social data API for AI agents: brand monitoring, social listening, and competitive intel across X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit via MCP, SDKs, and CLI.
NewsCatcher
Recall-first web and news search API for AI agents demanding complete event coverage.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
The Hog vs Chili Piper
These tools serve completely different needs. The Hog is for builders who want a flexible API to pull live web data (people, companies, social) into their own workflows. Chili Piper is a high-end conversion platform for enterprise teams that need to instantly turn web visitors into booked meetings. Choose The Hog if you're an AI engineer integrating real-time intelligence; choose Chili Piper if you're a revenue ops leader at a company with high inbound traffic and a Salesforce stack.
The Hog vs Screenplayiq
If you need real-time, API-driven web intelligence for GTM or AI agent workflows, The Hog is the clear choice. For screenwriters wanting data-driven script analysis and box office predictions, ScreenplayIQ is purpose-built. These tools serve completely different markets—choose based on your domain.
The Hog vs Presto Voice
The Hog and Presto Voice serve completely different markets — web intelligence vs. drive-thru voice AI. Choose The Hog if you need real-time, structured web data for AI agents or GTM workflows; choose Presto Voice if you operate a QSR chain and want to automate drive-thru ordering with upselling capabilities. They are not direct competitors.
Alternatives to The Hog
View allOlostep
Web data API for scraping, crawling, search, and monitoring — built for AI agents.
Xpoz MCP
Social data API for AI agents: brand monitoring, social listening, and competitive intel across X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit via MCP, SDKs, and CLI.
NewsCatcher
Recall-first web and news search API for AI agents demanding complete event coverage.
Frequently Asked Questions
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