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October 10, 2026

# The best Tavily alternatives for AI agents in 2026

Nebius completed its acquisition of Tavily in 2026, and Tavily still runs under its own brand. If you’re comparing options, this guide covers six Tavily alternatives for AI agents on price per 1,000 searches, free allowance, and fit.

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Author: By Parallel
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## Quick answer

Parallel is the closest match for agent search workloads. Its Turbo and Fast modes cost $1 per 1,000 requests, against $5 to $8 for 1,000 basic Tavily searches, and the same API key covers extraction and deep research. Exa runs its own embeddings-based index. Brave and Perplexity sell raw ranked results at $5 per 1,000, and Perplexity’s Fast Search costs $1. Linkup charges $5 to $6 per 1,000 requests. Firecrawl covers the site crawling that Tavily’s Map and Crawl endpoints handle.

## What happened with Tavily and Nebius

Nebius, the AI cloud company listed on Nasdaq as NBIS, announced an agreement to acquire Tavily[announced an agreement to acquire Tavily] on February 10, 2026. Bloomberg reported a price of $275 million, and Calcalist[Calcalist] reported that the total could reach $400 million if Tavily meets performance targets. In a May 20, 2026 post[May 20, 2026 post], Nebius said it has acquired Tavily and is bringing it into its Token Factory inference platform.

Under the deal, Tavily keeps its brand, and founder and CEO Rotem Weiss and his team joined Nebius, as Weiss wrote in Tavily is Joining Nebius[Tavily is Joining Nebius]. Neither company’s announcement mentioned changes to the API or to pricing. What it does change is ownership: Tavily’s roadmap is now set inside a cloud company that says it wants one stack for inference, search, and deployment.

## What Tavily costs today

Tavily bills in API credits. A basic, fast, or ultra-fast search uses 1 credit, and an advanced search uses 2. Credits cost $0.008 each on pay-as-you-go and $0.005 to $0.0075 on monthly plans priced from $30 to $500, so 1,000 basic searches cost $5 to $8 and 1,000 advanced searches cost $10 to $16. The free Researcher plan includes 1,000 credits a month. For the full plan table, see our Tavily vs. Parallel pricing comparison[Tavily vs. Parallel pricing comparison].

## Tavily alternatives at a glance

ProviderSearch price per 1,000 requestsFree allowanceBest for
Tavily (for reference)$5 to $8 basic, $10 to $16 advanced1,000 credits a monthFramework defaults and site crawling
Parallel$1 on Turbo or Fast, $5 on Basic or AdvancedUp to $80 at signup, plus $5 a monthSearch, extraction, and research on one API
Exa$4 Instant, $7 Fast or Auto, $12 to $15 Deep$10 a month, plus a $10 onboarding bonusEmbeddings-based search and research agents
Brave Search API$5$5 in credits a month, card requiredResults from an independent index
Perplexity Search API$5, or $1 with Fast SearchNone listed on the pricing pageRaw ranked results with filters
Linkup$5 to $64,000 free queriesPer-request search, fetch, and research
Firecrawl2 credits per search of 10 results, plans from $16 a month billed yearly1,000 credits a month (500 searches)Scraping and crawling whole sites

Prices are list prices from each provider’s pricing page, checked October 10, 2026. Result counts differ: Parallel, Exa, and Firecrawl prices include 10 results per search.

## The six alternatives

### Parallel

Parallel Search takes a natural-language objective, with optional keyword queries, and returns ranked URLs with excerpts sized for a model’s context window. Turbo and Fast cost $1 per 1,000 requests, and Basic and Advanced cost $5, with 10 results included. Extract costs $1 per 1,000 URLs, and the Task API runs deep research at fixed prices from $5 to $2,400 per 1,000 runs, so the cost of a run is known before it starts. In the Artificial Analysis Search Index[Artificial Analysis Search Index] (August 2026), Parallel basic scored 73 and Tavily basic scored 66. Parallel has no crawl endpoint, so keep a crawler if you depend on Tavily’s Map or Crawl. Details are on the pricing page[pricing page].

### Exa

Exa searches its own index using embeddings and returns page text and highlights with results. Instant search costs $4 per 1,000 requests, Fast and Auto cost $7, and Deep and Deep-Reasoning cost $12 and $15, each with up to 10 results. Exa also sells Contents at $1 per 1,000 pages, an Answer endpoint at $5 per 1,000, and Monitors at $15 per 1,000. Accounts get $10 in free credits a month.

### Brave Search API

Brave Search API serves results from Brave’s independent web index, the one behind Brave Search. Search costs $5 per 1,000 requests, Brave also offers an LLM Context service, and the Answers endpoint costs $4 per 1,000 plus $5 per million tokens. Every account gets $5 in free credits a month, and Brave asks for a card to verify free accounts.

### Perplexity Search API

Perplexity’s Search API returns raw ranked web results with filtering at $5 per 1,000 requests. Its Fast Search option costs $1 per 1,000. Teams already using Perplexity’s Agent API can call web search as a tool at $2.50 per 1,000 invocations, billed on top of model tokens.

### Linkup

Linkup charges per request, with no credit conversion. Search costs $0.005 to $0.006 per request depending on depth, Fetch costs $0.001 to $0.006 per fetch, and asynchronous Research costs $0.25 to $2.50 per request. New accounts can run 4,000 queries free, and Linkup lists SOC 2 Type II on its pricing page.

### Firecrawl

Firecrawl is the closest replacement for Tavily’s Map and Crawl endpoints. It bills in credits shared across endpoints, with a search of 10 results costing 2 credits. The free plan includes 1,000 credits a month, and paid plans start at $16 a month billed yearly for 5,000 credits. You can pair it with any search API on this list: the search API finds pages, and Firecrawl pulls whole sites.

## How to choose

  • - If cost per search matters most, compare fast tiers. Parallel Turbo and Fast and Perplexity Fast Search list at $1 per 1,000 requests.
  • - If your agent also extracts pages and runs research, Parallel and Exa both cover search, page contents, and research runs on one account.
  • - If you crawl whole sites, add Firecrawl next to your search API.
  • - If you want results from an independent index with full result metadata, start with Brave.
  • - If you pay per request and want simple billing, Parallel, Perplexity, and Linkup all charge per call.

## Switching from Tavily

Tavily Search maps to Parallel Search, Extract maps to Extract, and Research maps to the Task or Responses API, with Python and TypeScript SDKs on both sides. Tavily’s topic, answer, and image options have no direct parameter in Parallel. Our migration guide[migration guide] walks through the parameter mapping, and the Tavily vs. Parallel comparison[Tavily vs. Parallel comparison] covers accuracy and cost in detail.

## FAQ

### Did Nebius buy Tavily?

Yes. Nebius announced the agreement on February 10, 2026, and described the acquisition as complete in May 2026. Tavily keeps its brand, and founder Rotem Weiss leads the product inside Nebius.

### Did Tavily’s pricing change after the acquisition?

Neither announcement mentioned a pricing change. As of October 10, 2026, Tavily lists 1,000 free credits a month, $0.008 per credit on pay-as-you-go, and monthly plans from $30 to $500.

### What is the cheapest Tavily alternative?

At list price, Parallel Turbo and Fast and Perplexity Fast Search each cost $1 per 1,000 search requests. Tavily’s lowest search rate is $5 per 1,000 basic searches, on its $500-a-month Growth plan.

### Is there a free Tavily alternative?

Most providers include a recurring free allowance. Parallel gives up to $80 at signup and $5 a month, Exa $10 a month, Brave $5 a month, and Firecrawl 1,000 credits a month. Our guide to free web search APIs[free web search APIs] compares them.

## Sources

All prices checked October 10, 2026.

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