Quickstart

Using Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor? Skip the code: connect Prefetch over MCP and ask in plain language. To have a coding agent do this setup for you, use the agent quickstart.

Get an API key

export PREFETCH_API_KEY="your_api_key_here"

Keep it on your server. Don’t commit it or put it in browser code.

Make a request

/classify tells you what kind of business a website is. It costs 5 credits.

curl "https://api.prefetch.io/classify?url=https://stripe.com" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $PREFETCH_API_KEY"

Check the response

Every response has the same envelope: success, then data, then meta.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "domain": "stripe.com",
    "url": "https://stripe.com/",
    "classification": {
      "iab_id": "IAB3-4",
      "iab_parent_id": "IAB3",
      "category": "Business",
      "subcategory": "Business Software",
      "tagline_description": "A developer-first payments and financial infrastructure platform for online and in-person commerce.",
      "description": "A payments and financial-technology platform that lets businesses accept and process online and in-person payments…",
      "stock_tickers": [],
      "isins": []
    }
  },
  "meta": {
    "requestId": "a3f2c1d4-7b6e-4f2a-9c1d-8e3f2a1b4c5d",
    "durationMs": 196
  }
}

Try more

/enrich returns brand, company and industry in one call, for 12 credits:

curl "https://api.prefetch.io/enrich?url=https://stripe.com" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $PREFETCH_API_KEY"

From your code

There’s no SDK to install. Any HTTP client works:

const res = await fetch("https://api.prefetch.io/classify?url=https://stripe.com", {
  headers: { "X-API-Key": process.env.PREFETCH_API_KEY },
});
const body = await res.json();

if (!body.success) {
  throw new Error(`${body.error_code}: ${body.error}`);
}

console.log(body.data.classification.category); // "Business"

import os
import requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://api.prefetch.io/classify",
    params={"url": "https://stripe.com"},
    headers={"X-API-Key": os.environ["PREFETCH_API_KEY"]},
)
body = r.json()

if not body["success"]:
    raise Exception(f"{body['error_code']}: {body['error']}")

print(body["data"]["classification"]["category"])  # "Business"

type ClassifyResponse =
  | {
      success: true;
      data: {
        url: string;
        domain: string;
        classification: { category: string; subcategory: string | null; description: string };
      };
    }
  | { success: false; error: string; error_code: string; retryable: boolean };

const url = `https://api.prefetch.io/classify?url=${encodeURIComponent("https://stripe.com")}`;
const res = await fetch(url, { headers: { "X-API-Key": process.env.PREFETCH_API_KEY! } });
const body = (await res.json()) as ClassifyResponse;

if (!body.success) throw new Error(`${body.error_code}: ${body.error}`);
console.log(body.data.classification.category); // "Business"

If the request fails

Errors use the same envelope, with success: false:

{
  "success": false,
  "error": "The target URL could not be resolved. Please check the domain name.",
  "error_code": "DNS_RESOLUTION_FAILED",
  "retryable": false,
  "meta": {
    "requestId": "b9e1a2f3-4c5d-6e7f-8a9b-0c1d2e3f4a5b",
    "durationMs": 412
  }
}

Branch on error_code, not on the wording of error, which can change. retryable tells you whether the same request can succeed later.

Status	What to do
`401`	No key reached the API. Check the `X-API-Key` header and that the environment variable is set.
`403`	The key is wrong, revoked or out of credits. Check `error_code`.
`422`	The site couldn’t be read, for example `DNS_RESOLUTION_FAILED`. Check the URL.
`429`	Too many requests at once. Wait a moment and retry. See Rate limits.

Failed requests are never charged. See Error handling for every code.

Next steps

Enrich a company

Brand, company and industry in one call.

Scrape a page

Any page as markdown or structured JSON.

Recipes

Complete examples you can copy, or hand to a coding agent.

Credits

What each call costs.

Get started

Agents and MCP

Company data

Web data

Jobs and monitoring

Platform

Going to production

From your code

If the request fails

Next steps

Enrich a company

Scrape a page

Recipes

Credits