Exa vs Tavily
Prices and features checked 2026-10-17 on both vendors' own pages. “not verified” means we could not confirm it.
Exa or Tavily for agent web search? Exa prices search from $4 per 1,000 requests and contents at $1 per 1,000 pages, with $10 of free credit a month. Tavily bills credits: 1,000 free a month, then $0.008 per credit pay-as-you-go or $30/month for 4,000. Both have official MCP servers (MIT).
| Exa | Tavily | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Exa | Tavily |
| Free tier | $10 credits every month plus a $10 onboarding bonus, no payment method [source, checked 2026-10-17] | Researcher: 1,000 API credits/month, no card [source, checked 2026-10-17] |
| Entry paid price | Search from $4 per 1,000 requests; contents $1 per 1,000 pages; deep search $12–15 per 1,000 [source, checked 2026-10-17] | Pay as you go $0.008 per credit; Project $30/month: 4,000 credits [source, checked 2026-10-17] |
| Meter | Per 1,000 requests (search) or pages (contents) [source] | API credits; heavier requests use more credits [source] |
| API and SDKs | Search, contents, deep search and monitors APIs [source] | Search, extract, crawl, map and research endpoints with Python and JavaScript SDKs [source] |
| MCP server | Official MCP server (MIT) [source] | Official MCP server (MIT) [source] |
| Open source | not verified | not verified |
| Compliance | not verified | not verified |
| Data retention | not verified | not verified |
Verdict: when to use which
Use Exa if you want per-request pricing, page contents and deep search priced separately, or Exa's Claude and ChatGPT connectors.
Use Tavily if you want search, extract, crawl and map behind one credit balance and a simple free tier.
FAQ
Which is cheaper for 10,000 searches?
Exa: from $40 at $4 per 1,000 (before free credit). Tavily pay-as-you-go: $80 if each basic search uses 1 credit at $0.008; check Tavily's docs for credits per request type.
Do both have free tiers?
Yes: Exa $10 of credit each month plus a $10 onboarding bonus; Tavily 1,000 credits each month.
Alternatives?
Brave Search API ($5 per 1,000, own index) and Firecrawl (scraping and crawling into markdown).
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