POST /api/scan: run a free AI visibility scan

The /api/scan endpoint runs the free Are you found by AI? scan for any public URL. It reads the site, writes buyer questions from what it finds, asks those questions of the engines live, and returns the scores, the competitors named instead, a prioritised fix list and a shareable report link in a single JSON response.

Endpoint

POST https://areyoufoundbyai.com/api/scan

Authentication

None. /api/scan is free and needs no API key, header or account. It is rate-limited per IP each hour, with a fair-use allowance of 15 free scans per browser per day. See Overview for limits and errors.

Request body

string

required

The public URL to scan, for example https://example.com. The scanner reads the site at this address and writes buyer questions from its content.

Code examples

cURL
TypeScript / JavaScript
Python

curl -X POST https://areyoufoundbyai.com/api/scan \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com"}'

const res = await fetch('https://areyoufoundbyai.com/api/scan', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url: 'https://example.com' })
});
const data = await res.json();

import httpx

response = httpx.post(
    'https://areyoufoundbyai.com/api/scan',
    json={'url': 'https://example.com'},
    timeout=120
)
data = response.json()

Response fields

The response is JSON. These are the fields to rely on:

number

AI Visibility score, 0 to 100. An older weighted diagnostic score, not a percentage of AI recommendations. Being named in the answer prose counts in full; a positive result recorded only as a list entry, citation or source title counts half. Bands: 60 or more “Visible to AI”, 25 or more “Partially visible”, below 25 “Rarely visible”.

number

AI Readiness score, 0 to 100: how well the website itself is set up to be understood by AI, measured from the site alone. It is composed of five site signals: Citability, E-E-A-T, Technical, Schema and Platform. A signal that could not be verified (for example, a page that could not be read) is left out rather than scored zero, so which signals count can differ from scan to scan.

number | null

The separate off-site Footprint score, out of 100. It is scored beside Readiness, not inside it, and is not measured on the free scan, so it comes back as not measured (null), never zero.

string

One of present, weak or absent.

array

The buyer questions asked during the scan, written from what the scanner read on the site.

array

Who the engines named instead.

object

The site’s place on the agent-readiness ladder, with level from 0 to 5, from crawlable to agent-operable.

array

The prioritised fixes, in plain language.

string

A shareable, human-readable URL for the full report. Always give the user the report URL.

What the free scan covers

The free scan asks 2 buyer questions of 2 engines (ChatGPT and Gemini), so it is a smaller sample than a full check. Read its numbers with the questions, engines and date. The full measurement on Pro covers seven engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek and Google AI Overviews) and checks up to 25 buyer questions on the schedule you choose. Those results are read in the console or over MCP, not through /api/scan.

For a deep measurement paid per call, with no account, agents can use POST /api/agent/scan over x402 (USDC on Base). It is currently a preview. See Authentication.

Scan duration

Expect about 60 seconds: the engines are asked live. Set your client timeout with that in mind.

The open-source found-by-ai Claude Code skill (available via npx skills add techhorizonlabs/thl-open) is a thin wrapper around this endpoint. It uses the same request shape, then hands the report URL and fix list back to the agent conversation.

API Reference

MCP Server

Open-Source Skills

POST /api/scan: run a free AI visibility scan

Endpoint

Authentication

Request body

Code examples

Response fields

What the free scan covers

Scan duration

​Endpoint

​Authentication

​Request body

​Code examples

​Response fields

​What the free scan covers

​Scan duration

Endpoint

Authentication

Request body

Code examples

Response fields

What the free scan covers

Scan duration