# Alion Similar Companies Lookup

> Alion Similar Companies Lookup is a paid API for AI agents from alion.io, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-29).

Returns a ranked list of companies similar to a given company, including hiring activity, tech stack overlap, shared industry segments, and similarity scores.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://alion.io/mcp/rest/similar_companies?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.02/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-29
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/alion-similar-companies-lookup-007d1372
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_UOaC2Kab4vRUxnQcLyJmh

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability alion-similar-companies-lookup-007d1372
```

Example prompt: Find me up to 15 companies similar to Stripe — I want to see their hiring activity, tech stack overlap, and similarity scores so I can figure out where else I should be applying.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to discover companies that are peer or lookalike firms to a known company, especially to expand a job search, benchmark hiring activity, or map competitive landscapes. It is superior to a plain company search because it returns a ranked similarity score with shared technology and industry segment signals, and live hiring data. Prefer this over a generic job search when the user already has a reference company in mind and wants to broaden their target list intelligently.

## Known failure modes

- Company name not resolved — ambiguous or unknown company name returns no results or a resolution warning
- No similar companies found for very niche or small companies
- Country filter narrows results to zero matches
- Limit parameter out of bounds (must be 1–25)
- Rate limit or payment failure returns 402 error
- Stale data if a company's hiring board hasn't been re-crawled recently

## How this service works

Alion is built to get you hired: 1,808,198 live roles read from employer boards and re-verified daily, your fit on every job, a resume rewritten for each application, direct apply. Free for developers.

## Output

A ranked list of companies similar to the queried company, each with: similarity score, size band gap, shared industry segments, shared technologies, hiring status (is_hiring, open_jobs, new_jobs_30d, last_job_posted), ATS vendor, headquarters city and country, industry segment, employer type, and founding year. Also includes metadata about the target company itself, pagination cursor, and any applied filters.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "company"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "limit": {
       "type": "integer",
       "default": 10,
       "maximum": 25,
       "minimum": 1
      },
      "detail": {
       "enum": [
        "standard",
        "compact"
       ],
       "type": "string",
       "default": "standard"
      },
      "company": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "country": {
       "type": "string"
      }
     },
     "additionalProperties": false
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "items": [
   {
    "id": 4808,
    "url": "https://alion.io/company/fis",
    "name": "FIS",
    "domain": "fisglobal.com",
    "hiring": {
     "is_hiring": true,
     "open_jobs": 397,
     "new_jobs_30d": 271,
     "last_job_posted": "2026-10-19"
    },
    "coverage": "ats_board",
    "industry": "Financial Services",
    "size_band": "1001-5000",
    "ats_vendor": "Workday",
    "similarity": {
     "score": 14.85,
     "size_band_gap": 0,
     "same_hq_country": true,
     "shared_segments": [
      "Payment Processing & Gateways"
     ],
     "shared_technologies": [
      "Python",
      "Go",
      "Java",
      "TypeScript"
     ]
    },
    "founded_year": 1968,
    "headquarters": {
     "city": "Jacksonville",
     "country": {
      "iso": "US",
      "name": "United States"
     }
    },
    "employer_type": "direct",
    "industry_segment": "Financial Software & Embedded Finance"
   }
  ],
  "target": {
   "id": 64,
   "name": "Stripe",
   "domain": "stripe.com",
   "industry": "Financial Services",
   "open_jobs": 693,
   "size_band": "1001-5000",
   "hq_country": "US",
   "founded_year": 2010
  },
  "has_more": false,
  "returned": 1,
  "warnings": [],
  "next_cursor": null,
  "filters_applied": {
   "company": {
    "id": 64,
    "name": "Stripe",
    "domain": "stripe.com",
    "resolved_by": "domain_exact"
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/alion-similar-companies-lookup-007d1372/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from alion.io](https://www.zero.xyz/host/alion.io/llms.txt)