October 25, 2026

# The best Tavily alternatives for AI agents in 2026

Tavily alternatives for AI agents differ most on price per 1,000 searches, free allowance, and whether one API key covers search, extraction, and research. Nebius completed its acquisition of Tavily in 2026, and Tavily still runs under its own brand. This guide covers six alternatives, what Tavily costs today, how to choose among them, and how to switch.

Author: By Parallel

Tags:Comparison

## 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. The change is in ownership, which puts Tavily’s roadmap 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

Provider	Search price per 1,000 requests	Free allowance	Best for
Tavily (for reference)	$5 to $8 basic, $10 to $16 advanced	1,000 credits a month	Framework defaults and site crawling
Parallel	$1 on Turbo or Fast, $5 on Basic or Advanced	Up to $80 at signup, plus $5 a month	Search, extraction, and research on one API
Exa	$4 Instant, $7 Fast or Auto, $12 to $15 Deep	$10 a month, plus a $10 onboarding bonus	Embeddings-based search and research agents
Brave Search API	$5	$5 in credits a month, card required	Results from an independent index
Perplexity Search API	$5, or $1 with Fast Search	None listed on the pricing page	Raw ranked results with filters
Linkup	$5 to $6	4,000 free queries	Per-request search, fetch, and research
Firecrawl	2 credits per search of 10 results, plans from $16 a month billed yearly	1,000 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 runs its own embeddings-based index and returns page text and highlights alongside results. Pricing goes by tier: Instant is $4 per 1,000 requests, Fast and Auto $7, Deep $12, and Deep-Reasoning $15, each with up to 10 results. Contents ($1 per 1,000 pages), an Answer endpoint ($5 per 1,000), and Monitors ($15 per 1,000) are billed separately. Accounts get $10 in free credits a month.

### Brave Search API

Brave’s API serves results from the same independent web index that runs Brave Search, at $5 per 1,000 requests. The Answers endpoint costs $4 per 1,000 plus $5 per million tokens, and Brave also offers an LLM Context service. Free accounts get $5 in credits a month but need a card for verification.

### 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, using search to find pages and Firecrawl to pull 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.
- Parallel and Exa both cover search, page contents, and research runs on one account, which helps if your agent also extracts pages and runs research.
- If you crawl whole sites, add Firecrawl next to your search API.
- Brave is the place to start for results from an independent index with full result metadata.
- Parallel, Perplexity, and Linkup all charge per call, which keeps billing predictable.

## 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 in free credits plus $5 a month with a card on file, 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.

Replacing a different provider? See our guides to Exa alternatives[Exa alternatives] and Firecrawl alternatives[Firecrawl alternatives].