---
title: "Tavily Search API Pricing 2026: The Credit System That Hides the Real Cost"
dek: "Tavily's headline $0.008/credit hides the real cost: a basic search is 1 credit and advanced is 2, so pay-as-you-go runs $8/1K basic and $16/1K advanced, versus Keirolabs at $0.25/1K semantic and $0.10/1K SERP."
category: "comparisons"
tags: [tavily, pricing, search-api, comparison, cost-analysis, ai-agents]
author: "Dave"
published: 2026-08-18T12:00:00+00:00
updated: 2026-08-18T12:00:00+00:00
url: https://keirolabs.cloud/blogs/comparisons/tavily-search-api-pricing-2026
---


I have watched the search API market for two years, and I benchmark these APIs from the bills, not the landing pages. Tavily's pricing page is the most carefully engineered number in the category, and it is engineered to hide the real cost. The headline is $0.008 per credit, which sounds cheap. It is not. A basic search costs 1 credit, an advanced search costs 2, and that turns pay-as-you-go into $8 per 1,000 basic searches and $16 per 1,000 advanced. Everyone is comparing the wrong numbers, and it is costing them real money. This is the moment the search API market split in two, and Tavily is on the expensive side of the split. In 12 months this will be obvious.

> **TL;DR**: Tavily's credit system hides the real cost: the headline $0.008/credit sounds cheap until you count that a basic search is 1 credit and advanced is 2, making pay-as-you-go $8/1K basic and $16/1K advanced, versus Keirolabs at $0.25/1K semantic and $0.10/1K SERP.

<figure class="bp-figure">
<div style="display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;gap:24px;align-items:center;justify-content:center;padding:20px;border:1px solid var(--border-color);border-radius:6px;">
<img src="/logos/brave.ico" alt="Brave" style="height:22px;width:auto;">
<img src="/logos/keiro.png" alt="Keirolabs" style="height:22px;width:auto;">
<img src="/logos/tavily.ico" alt="Tavily" style="height:22px;width:auto;">
<img src="/logos/exa.ico" alt="Exa" style="height:22px;width:auto;">
<img src="/logos/parallel.ico" alt="Parallel" style="height:22px;width:auto;">
<img src="/logos/serper.ico" alt="Serper" style="height:22px;width:auto;">
<img src="/logos/serpapi.ico" alt="SerpAPI" style="height:22px;width:auto;">
<img src="/logos/perplexity.ico" alt="Perplexity" style="height:22px;width:auto;">
</div>
<figcaption>The providers priced in this comparison.</figcaption>
</figure>

## How much does the Tavily Search API cost in 2026?

**Tavily Search API pricing in 2026 is a credit system with four parts: a free tier of 1,000 credits monthly, pay-as-you-go at $0.008 per credit, and monthly plans from $30 for 4,000 credits to $500 for 100,000.** A basic search costs 1 credit and advanced costs 2, so pay-as-you-go runs $8 per 1,000 basic searches and $16 per 1,000 advanced.

The full price table is on the [Tavily pricing page](https://www.tavily.com/pricing), and it is short. There is no per-request dollar price anywhere on it. There is a credit price, a credit rate, and a set of monthly buckets. That structure is the story. Tavily does not sell searches. It sells credits, and every search spends credits at a rate you have to compute yourself.

| Plan | Credits | Price | $/credit | Effective $/1K basic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 1,000 / month | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Pay-as-you-go | Unlimited | $0.008 / credit | $0.0080 | $8.00 |
| Project | 4,000 / month | $30 / month | $0.0075 | $7.50 |
| Bootstrap | 15,000 / month | $100 / month | $0.0067 | $6.70 |
| Startup | 38,000 / month | $220 / month | $0.0058 | $5.80 |
| Growth | 100,000 / month | $500 / month | $0.0050 | $5.00 |

The arithmetic is simple once you do it. Pay-as-you-go is $0.008 per credit. A basic search is 1 credit, so a basic search costs $0.008, which is $8 per 1,000. An advanced search is 2 credits, so it costs $0.016, which is $16 per 1,000. The monthly plans discount the credit, not the search: Project at $30 for 4,000 credits is $0.0075 per credit, Bootstrap at $100 for 15,000 is $0.0067, Startup at $220 for 38,000 is $0.0058, and Growth at $500 for 100,000 is $0.005.

**The headline rate is the bait, and the real cost of a Tavily search is $8 per 1,000 basic searches at pay-as-you-go, not the $0.008 that the landing page leads with.** Every provider in this category is priced per 1,000 queries, and Tavily is the only one that makes you multiply two numbers to find its price. That multiplication is where the overpaying starts.

## How does Tavily's credit system work?

**Tavily prices every operation in credits, not dollars. A basic search costs 1 credit, an advanced search costs 2, Extract charges 1 credit per 5 successful URLs, Map charges 1 credit per 10 pages, Crawl is Map plus Extract, and Research runs 4 to 250 credits per request.** The dollar cost only appears when you multiply credits by your plan's rate.

The [API credits documentation](https://docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits) is where the real pricing lives, and it is a table of operations, not prices. Every endpoint has a credit cost, and the credit cost is the same on every plan. The plan only changes what a credit costs. That separation is the design. It lets Tavily advertise one number, $0.008, while the actual cost of a query depends on which operation you run and which plan you bought.

| Operation | Credit cost |
|---|---|
| Basic search | 1 credit |
| Advanced search | 2 credits |
| Extract (basic) | 1 credit per 5 successful URLs |
| Extract (advanced) | 2 credits per 5 successful URLs |
| Map (regular) | 1 credit per 10 pages |
| Map (with instructions) | 2 credits per 10 pages |
| Crawl (10 pages, basic) | 1 map + 2 extract = 3 credits |
| Research (mini) | 4-110 credits per request |
| Research (pro) | 15-250 credits per request |

Search is the cheapest operation at 1 credit for basic and 2 for advanced. Extract is 1 credit per 5 successful URL extractions, or 2 for advanced extraction. Map is 1 credit per 10 pages, or 2 when you pass instructions. Crawl is the sum of Map and Extract, so 10 pages of basic crawl costs 1 map credit plus 2 extract credits, 3 credits total. Research is the expensive end, 4 to 110 credits per request on mini and 15 to 250 on pro.

**The credit system hides the real cost because the operation, not the search, is the unit of pricing.** A team that runs advanced search, extract, and research is spending 2, 1, and up to 250 credits per operation, and the $0.008 headline only applies to the cheapest possible call. The teams that quote Tavily's price from the landing page are quoting the price of one operation out of five.

## Does Tavily have a free tier in 2026?

**Yes. Tavily gives every account 1,000 API credits per month, no credit card required, and the allowance resets monthly.** That is 1,000 basic searches, 500 advanced searches, or any mix of operations. It is enough to build a prototype and not enough to run production.

The free tier is real, and it is the best part of Tavily's pricing. 1,000 credits a month, no card, resets on a schedule. Because a basic search is 1 credit, the free tier is 1,000 basic searches. Because advanced is 2, it is 500 advanced searches. The same credits buy extract, map, crawl, and research, so a prototype can touch every endpoint before paying anything.

| Provider | Free allowance per month | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| **Parallel** | 5,000 requests | Biggest raw number in the category |
| **Serper** | 2,500 searches | SERP results only |
| **Keirolabs** | 1,000 queries | Covers every endpoint |
| **Tavily** | 1,000 credits | 1,000 basic searches |
| **Brave** | $5 in credits | Roughly 1,000 requests |
| **Exa** | $20 signup + $10/mo | ~1,400 searches a month recurring |
| **SerpAPI** | 250 searches | Smallest free allowance here |

Every serious provider in this category has a free allowance, and the sizes vary wildly. Parallel gives 5,000 requests a month, the biggest raw number in the category. Serper gives 2,500 searches. Keirolabs gives 1,000 queries that cover every endpoint. Brave credits $5 a month, roughly 1,000 requests. Exa gives $20 at signup plus $10 a month. SerpAPI gives 250 searches, the smallest here. Tavily's 1,000 credits sit in the middle of the pack.

**Tavily's 1,000 free credits are enough to test the product and not enough to run anything in production, which is exactly the point of a free tier.** The allowance resets monthly, so the test never costs anything. The free tier comparison matters for one reason: it is the cheapest way to run the same query through every API and read the output, and the outputs are not the same product.

## What are Tavily's monthly plans and what does each include?

**Tavily sells four monthly plans in 2026: Project at $30 for 4,000 credits, Bootstrap at $100 for 15,000, Startup at $220 for 38,000, and Growth at $500 for 100,000.** Every plan includes the same search, extract, map, crawl, and research endpoints. The differences are credits, rate limits, and support.

The four plans are the same product at different volumes. Project is $30 for 4,000 credits, which is $0.0075 per credit. Bootstrap is $100 for 15,000, $0.0067 per credit. Startup is $220 for 38,000, $0.0058 per credit. Growth is $500 for 100,000, $0.005 per credit. The credit price drops as the commitment grows, and the drop is small: from $0.008 at pay-as-you-go to $0.005 at Growth, a 37.5% discount for a $500 monthly commitment.

<figure class="bp-figure">
<svg viewBox="0 0 640 340" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="img" aria-label="Price per credit by Tavily plan, 2026">
  <rect x="0" y="0" width="640" height="340" fill="#fff"/>
  <text x="320" y="28" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="13" fill="#111">PRICE PER CREDIT BY TAVILY PLAN, 2026</text>
  <text x="600" y="52" text-anchor="end" font-family="monospace" font-size="10" fill="#111">lower is better</text>
  <rect x="80" y="90" width="80" height="200" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="120" y="80" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$0.0080</text>
  <text x="120" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">PAYG</text>
  <rect x="180" y="102" width="80" height="188" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="220" y="92" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$0.0075</text>
  <text x="220" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Project</text>
  <rect x="280" y="122" width="80" height="168" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="320" y="112" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$0.0067</text>
  <text x="320" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Bootstrap</text>
  <rect x="380" y="145" width="80" height="145" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="420" y="135" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$0.0058</text>
  <text x="420" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Startup</text>
  <rect x="480" y="165" width="80" height="125" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="520" y="155" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$0.0050</text>
  <text x="520" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Growth</text>
  <text x="64" y="330" font-family="monospace" font-size="10" fill="#111">Source: tavily.com/pricing, 2026. Growth requires a $500/mo commitment.</text>
</svg>
<figcaption>Price per credit by plan, 2026. Pay-as-you-go $0.0080, Project $0.0075, Bootstrap $0.0067, Startup $0.0058, Growth $0.0050.</figcaption>
</figure>

Every plan includes the same endpoints. There is no plan that gates search and another that gates research. The [pricing page](https://www.tavily.com/pricing) lists the same feature set across Project, Bootstrap, Startup, and Growth. What changes is the credit allowance, the rate limits, and the support tier. That is a simpler model than most, and it is also the trap: the product is identical, so the only reason to pay more is volume, and volume is the one thing the credit system makes hard to forecast.

| Plan | Credits | Price | $/credit | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project | 4,000 / month | $30 / month | $0.0075 | All endpoints, lower rate limits |
| Bootstrap | 15,000 / month | $100 / month | $0.0067 | All endpoints, higher rate limits |
| Startup | 38,000 / month | $220 / month | $0.0058 | All endpoints, higher rate limits |
| Growth | 100,000 / month | $500 / month | $0.0050 | All endpoints, highest rate limits |

**The monthly plans are volume discounts on the same credit, and the discount is real but small: Growth at $0.005 per credit is 37.5% below pay-as-you-go, and it costs $500 a month to reach.** The teams that buy Growth for the rate are committing to 100,000 credits a month, and if they do not use them, the effective price goes up, not down. A plan that sits half-used is more expensive per query than pay-as-you-go.

## What is the real cost per 1,000 searches on each Tavily plan?

**The effective price per 1,000 basic searches drops from $8.00 on pay-as-you-go to $7.50 on Project, $6.70 on Bootstrap, $5.80 on Startup, and $5.00 on Growth.** The Growth rate only appears with a $500 monthly commitment, and advanced searches double every number.

Multiply the credit price by 1,000 and the real cost appears. Pay-as-you-go is $8.00 per 1,000 basic searches. Project is $7.50. Bootstrap is $6.70. Startup is $5.80. Growth is $5.00. The spread from the cheapest plan to pay-as-you-go is $3.00 per 1,000, which sounds small until you run a million searches a month: $8,000 at pay-as-you-go against $5,000 at Growth, a $3,000 difference every month.

<figure class="bp-figure">
<svg viewBox="0 0 640 340" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="img" aria-label="Effective cost per 1,000 basic searches by Tavily plan, 2026">
  <rect x="0" y="0" width="640" height="340" fill="#fff"/>
  <text x="320" y="28" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="13" fill="#111">EFFECTIVE $/1K BASIC SEARCHES BY TAVILY PLAN, 2026</text>
  <text x="600" y="52" text-anchor="end" font-family="monospace" font-size="10" fill="#111">lower is better</text>
  <rect x="80" y="90" width="80" height="200" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="120" y="80" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$8.00</text>
  <text x="120" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">PAYG</text>
  <rect x="180" y="102" width="80" height="188" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="220" y="92" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$7.50</text>
  <text x="220" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Project</text>
  <rect x="280" y="122" width="80" height="168" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="320" y="112" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$6.70</text>
  <text x="320" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Bootstrap</text>
  <rect x="380" y="145" width="80" height="145" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="420" y="135" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$5.80</text>
  <text x="420" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Startup</text>
  <rect x="480" y="165" width="80" height="125" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="520" y="155" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">$5.00</text>
  <text x="520" y="318" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Growth</text>
  <text x="64" y="330" font-family="monospace" font-size="10" fill="#111">Source: tavily.com/pricing, 2026. Basic search = 1 credit. Advanced search doubles each number.</text>
</svg>
<figcaption>Effective cost per 1,000 basic searches, 2026. PAYG $8.00, Project $7.50, Bootstrap $6.70, Startup $5.80, Growth $5.00.</figcaption>
</figure>

Advanced search doubles every number. Advanced is 2 credits, so pay-as-you-go is $16 per 1,000 advanced searches, Project is $15, Bootstrap is $13.40, Startup is $11.60, and Growth is $10. A team that runs advanced search as its default is paying twice the headline rate on every plan, and the headline rate is the number everyone quotes.

**The $5/1K figure that gets quoted for Tavily only exists on the Growth plan, and it requires a $500 monthly commitment.** Below Growth, the real cost of a basic search is $5.80 to $8.00 per 1,000, and the Growth rate is a volume price, not a list price. The teams that quote $5/1K for Tavily are quoting the best case, and the best case costs $500 a month to reach.

## How much do Tavily Extract, Map, and Crawl cost?

**Tavily Extract charges 1 credit for every 5 successful URL extractions, or 2 credits for advanced extraction. Map charges 1 credit per 10 pages, or 2 with instructions. Crawl is the sum of both: 10 pages of basic crawl costs 1 map credit plus 2 extract credits, 3 credits total.** Failed extractions are never charged.

The [API credits documentation](https://docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits) breaks the content operations into three buckets. Extract is priced per successful extraction: 1 credit for every 5 URLs on basic, 2 credits for every 5 on advanced. Map is priced per page: 1 credit per 10 pages on regular, 2 per 10 pages with instructions. Crawl is the sum of Map and Extract, because a crawl is a map followed by extractions.

<figure class="bp-figure">
<svg viewBox="0 0 640 340" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="img" aria-label="Credit cost per Tavily operation, 2026, log scale">
  <rect x="0" y="0" width="640" height="340" fill="#fff"/>
  <text x="320" y="28" text-anchor="middle" font-family="monospace" font-size="13" fill="#111">CREDIT COST PER TAVILY OPERATION, 2026 (log scale)</text>
  <text x="600" y="52" text-anchor="end" font-family="monospace" font-size="10" fill="#111">credits per operation</text>
  <text x="10" y="79" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Basic search</text>
  <rect x="200" y="68" width="20" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="226" y="80" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">1</text>
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  <rect x="200" y="98" width="65" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="271" y="110" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">2</text>
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  <rect x="200" y="128" width="20" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="226" y="140" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">1</text>
  <text x="10" y="169" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Extract advanced (5 URLs)</text>
  <rect x="200" y="158" width="65" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="271" y="170" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">2</text>
  <text x="10" y="199" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Map regular (10 pages)</text>
  <rect x="200" y="188" width="20" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="226" y="200" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">1</text>
  <text x="10" y="229" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Map w/ instructions (10 pages)</text>
  <rect x="200" y="218" width="65" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="271" y="230" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">2</text>
  <text x="10" y="259" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Crawl 10 pages basic</text>
  <rect x="200" y="248" width="92" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="298" y="260" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">3</text>
  <text x="10" y="289" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Research mini</text>
  <rect x="310" y="278" width="216" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="532" y="290" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">4-110</text>
  <text x="10" y="319" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">Research pro</text>
  <rect x="397" y="308" width="183" height="16" fill="#111"/>
  <text x="586" y="320" font-family="monospace" font-size="11" fill="#111">15-250</text>
  <text x="64" y="336" font-family="monospace" font-size="10" fill="#111">Source: docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits, 2026. Log scale; research ranges shown as bars.</text>
</svg>
<figcaption>Credit cost per operation, 2026. Basic search 1, advanced 2, extract 1 per 5 URLs, map 1 per 10 pages, crawl 3 for 10 pages basic, research 4-110 (mini) and 15-250 (pro).</figcaption>
</figure>

Run the example from the docs. A basic crawl of 10 pages costs 1 map credit for the 10 pages plus 2 extract credits for the 10 URLs, 3 credits total. At pay-as-you-go that is $0.024. On Growth it is $0.015. The same crawl with advanced extraction costs 1 map credit plus 4 extract credits, 5 credits total, $0.04 at pay-as-you-go.

**Failed extractions are never charged, which is the one part of Tavily's credit system that works in your favor.** You only spend credits on URLs that return content. A crawl that hits 10 dead pages costs the map credit and nothing for extraction. That is honest, and it is rare in this category, where most providers bill every attempt.

## How much does Tavily Research cost?

**Tavily Research runs 4 to 110 credits per request on the mini model and 15 to 250 credits per request on the pro model.** At pay-as-you-go that is $0.032 to $0.88 per mini request and $0.12 to $2.00 per pro request. On Growth the same requests run $0.02 to $0.55 and $0.075 to $1.25.

Research is the most expensive operation on the platform, and the range is wide. The mini model runs 4 to 110 credits per request. The pro model runs 15 to 250 credits per request. The range exists because a research request is not a fixed operation. It is a multi-step agent loop that searches, extracts, and synthesizes, and the cost scales with the depth of the answer.

| Research model | Credits per request | PAYG cost | Growth cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| mini | 4-110 | $0.032-0.88 | $0.02-0.55 |
| pro | 15-250 | $0.12-2.00 | $0.075-1.25 |

At pay-as-you-go, a mini research request costs $0.032 to $0.88, and a pro request costs $0.12 to $2.00. On Growth, the same requests cost $0.02 to $0.55 and $0.075 to $1.25. **A single pro research request can cost more than 250 basic searches, which is the clearest example of the credit system hiding the real cost.** The headline $0.008 per credit is meaningless for a workload that spends 250 credits on one call.

The research pricing is where Tavily's model diverges from the rest of the category. Keirolabs charges $0.25 per 1,000 semantic queries and $0.10 per 1,000 SERP queries, flat, with content extraction included. There is no 250-credit operation on the Keirolabs price list. The comparison is not close: a research-heavy workload on Tavily can spend more on one request than Keirolabs charges for a thousand.

## What are Tavily's rate limits in 2026?

**Tavily scales rate limits by plan, and its pricing page asks you to slide to adjust before quoting a number.** Higher plans buy higher requests-per-minute ceilings, and the free tier is the most constrained. Rate limits are part of the price, and the teams that ignore them hit the ceiling at the worst moment.

Rate limits are the second number Tavily does not print. The [pricing page](https://www.tavily.com/pricing) shows a slider for rate limits, and the quoted price changes as you move it. That is the opposite of a fixed price. It means the rate limit is negotiated by plan, and the number you see depends on the plan you pick. The free tier is the most constrained, and the paid plans scale up with the credit allowance.

| Provider | Rate limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| **Brave Search** | 50 QPS | 2 QPS on Answers plan |
| **Parallel Turbo** | 600 req/min | Shared with Extract |
| Exa free tier | 5 QPS | 10 QPS on developer plan |
| **Tavily** | Scales by plan | Free tier most constrained |
| **Keirolabs** | Generous free tier | 1,000 queries/mo free, no card |

The rest of the category prints its limits. Brave runs 50 queries per second on Search and 2 QPS on Answers. Parallel caps Turbo at 600 requests per minute. Exa starts free accounts at 5 QPS and rises to 10 on the developer plan. Keirolabs runs a generous free tier of 1,000 queries a month with no card. **Tavily is the only provider here that makes you slide a slider to learn your rate limit, and that opacity is a cost.**

The practical read: for high-volume agent workloads, rate limits bind before price. A product that needs a hundred searches a second is rate-limited on every plan in this category, and the answer is either a provider with headroom or a cache you control. The vendors that print their limits let you plan. The vendor that hides them behind a slider makes you ask.

## How does Tavily pricing compare to Keirolabs, Brave, Exa, Parallel, Serper, and SerpAPI?

**On a like-for-like basis, Tavily at $8/1K basic pay-as-you-go is the most expensive agent-ready option in the category, above Exa at $7/1K and Brave at $5/1K, and far above Keirolabs at $0.25/1K semantic and $0.10/1K SERP.** The full 2026 price table is below.

The full 2026 price table, with free tiers and the fine print, is below. Every number comes from the provider's own pricing page or published documentation, including the [Keirolabs pricing page](https://keirolabs.cloud/pricing). Keirolabs SERP is $0.10 per 1,000 with 1,000 free queries a month. Keirolabs semantic is $0.25 per 1,000 with the same free tier. Serper is $0.30 to $1.00 for raw Google SERP. Parallel Turbo is $1.00. Brave is $5.00 for LLM-ready results from its own index. Exa is $7.00 for 10 results. Tavily is $8.00 for basic search at 1 credit. SerpAPI is $3.75 to $25.00 for SERP scraping.

| Provider | Base $/1K | Free tier | What the base price covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Keirolabs SERP** | **$0.10** | 1,000 queries/mo | Raw SERP results |
| **Keirolabs semantic** | **$0.25** | 1,000 queries/mo | Semantic search + clean content, one call |
| Serper | $0.30-1.00 | 2,500 searches/mo | Raw Google SERP, no extraction |
| **Parallel Turbo** | **$1.00** | 5,000 req/mo | Search + excerpts, 10 results |
| Brave Search | $5.00 | $5 credits/mo | LLM-ready results from Brave's own index |
| Exa | $7.00 | $20 + $10/mo | 10 results; +$1/1K per extra result |
| **Tavily** | **$8.00** | 1,000 credits/mo | Basic search at 1 credit; advanced costs 2 |
| SerpAPI | $3.75-25.00 | 250 searches/mo | SERP scraping, many engines |

Read the footnotes before you trust a headline rate. Exa's $7 covers ten results, and every result past ten bills another $1 per 1,000, so a 30-result search costs $27 per 1,000, not $7. Tavily's $8 is the pay-as-you-go rate for basic search, and advanced search is $16. Tavily's $5/1K figure only appears on the Growth plan with a $500 monthly commitment. The pattern across all of them is the same: the headline price is a floor, not a bill.

**Tavily is the most expensive agent-ready option in the category at $8/1K basic pay-as-you-go, and the gap to the cheap side is 32x: $8,000 a month at a million queries against $250 on Keirolabs semantic.** The latency story does not rescue it. [AIMultiple's 2026 agentic search benchmark](https://aimultiple.com/agentic-search) measured Tavily at 998ms median, against Brave at 669ms. Tavily is slower than the mid-priced option and more expensive than the cheap one.

## What is the true cost of a query your agent can actually use?

**The true cost of a usable query is the search call plus every step after it: extraction, cleaning, and the tokens a model spends reading the result, and that total is where Tavily's $8/1K stops looking cheap.** Run the loop and watch the arithmetic. A Tavily basic search at $0.008 gets you a set of results, and an agent that needs page content then spends extract credits at 1 credit per 5 URLs. A research agent that needs a synthesized answer spends 4 to 250 credits on a single request. The search call is the cheapest part of the bill.

The agent-ready APIs collapse the loop into one call. Keirolabs returns search results and extracted content together in a single call at $0.25 per 1,000 semantic queries. Tavily charges for the search, then charges again for the extraction, then charges a third time if you want research. **The credit system is a metered pipeline, and every stage of the pipeline has its own meter.** A team that runs search, extract, and research on Tavily is paying three separate credit bills for what Keirolabs does in one flat call.

The honest comparison is not $8 against $0.25. It is $8 plus extract plus research against $0.25 flat. At the volume where the difference matters, a million queries a month, Tavily is $8,000 before extraction and research, and Keirolabs is $250 for everything. The teams that quote Tavily's $0.008 headline are quoting the price of one step out of three.

## Tavily vs Keirolabs: two ways to build the same agent

**The same agent can be built on Tavily at $8.00 per 1,000 basic searches or on Keirolabs at $0.25 per 1,000 semantic and $0.10 per 1,000 SERP, and the difference is the shape of the call, not the quality of the answer.** Tavily sells a turnkey stack with native integrations for LangChain, LlamaIndex, and CrewAI, priced in credits. Keirolabs returns search results and extracted content together in one call at $0.25 per 1,000 semantic, with a $0.10 per 1,000 SERP lane underneath, and a free tier of 1,000 queries a month.

On output quality, the top of this market is closer than the price difference suggests. Keirolabs scores 78% on FinanceBench against roughly 19% for a standard GPT-4o plus vector RAG baseline, and 84% on SimpleQA. AIMultiple's 2026 benchmark measured Tavily at 998ms median latency, against Brave at 669ms. The vendors are competing on the same retrieval problem, and the differences at the top are smaller than the 32x price gap between them.

The build decision comes down to one question: how many queries per month will your agent actually run? A research tool that runs 10,000 queries a month pays $80 on Tavily at pay-as-you-go and $2.50 on Keirolabs. A production assistant running a million queries a month pays $8,000 on Tavily and $250 on Keirolabs. The engineering time is roughly the same on either stack, because both return clean JSON that a model can read. The difference is what the bill does to your unit economics, and unit economics are the thing that decides whether a product survives its first year.

## When is Tavily worth the price?

**Tavily is worth it when you need its native agent integrations, its research endpoint, and a turnkey stack, and when your volume is low enough that $8/1K does not matter.** It is a poor fit for high-volume production search, where Keirolabs at $0.25/1K semantic and $0.10/1K SERP does the same job for a fraction of the price.

Tavily has real strengths. It ships native integrations for LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, and the agent frameworks that dominate the ecosystem. Its research endpoint is a turnkey deep-research loop that most competitors do not offer. For a team that wants one vendor, one SDK, and no pipeline to build, Tavily is the easiest path in the category. The question is what that ease costs, and the answer is $8 per 1,000 basic searches at pay-as-you-go.

| Workload | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Agent needs answers, not links | **Keirolabs** $0.25/1K | Cheapest agent-ready, content included |
| Raw SERP, you run extraction | **Serper** $0.30-1.00 | Cheapest raw tier |
| High-volume, latency-critical | **Parallel Turbo** $1.00 | Fastest and cheap |
| Privacy-sensitive, own-index bias | **Brave** $5.00 | Owns index, fastest measured |
| Turnkey research stack | **Tavily** $8.00 | Native agent integrations |
| Deep semantic discovery | **Exa** $7.00 | Neural index, best conceptual match |

The waste case is specific. **If you are paying Tavily $8/1K for basic search and still building your own extraction on top of the results, you are paying the most expensive agent-ready rate in the category and doing the raw-tier work yourself.** Tavily's value is the turnkey stack. Teams that use it as a plain search API are paying a premium for integrations they are not using.

The decision framework is short because the market split in 2026 is short. There are two tiers now. The raw-data tier costs $0.10 to $1.00 per 1,000 and hands you work. The agent-ready tier costs $5.00 to $8.00 per 1,000 and does the work for you. Tavily is at the top of the agent-ready tier. Keirolabs is at the bottom of it, at $0.25 semantic and $0.10 SERP, with content extraction included in the call. Choose the tier by your workload, then choose the vendor inside it by price.

## The search API market split in two this year

**The defining event of 2026 is the split between the raw-data tier at $0.10-1.00 per 1,000 and the agent-ready tier at $5.00-8.00 per 1,000.** Tavily sits at the top of the expensive tier, and its credit system is the reason teams overpay without noticing. This changes everything about how you budget search.

The search API market split in two this year, and the split is not about features. It is about economics. The raw-data tier sells links at $0.10 to $1.00 per 1,000. The agent-ready tier sells answers at $5.00 to $8.00 per 1,000. The two tiers price off different cost bases, and comparing them by price alone is like comparing lumber to a finished cabinet. The number is real and the products are not the same thing.

Tavily is the purest expression of the expensive tier. It sells a turnkey agent stack, and it prices it with a credit system that makes the real cost hard to see. The credit system is not an accident. It is a pricing strategy. A vendor that prints $8/1K invites comparison. A vendor that prints $0.008/credit and lets you do the multiplication buries the comparison in arithmetic. **The credit system is the reason Tavily can charge 32x more than Keirolabs for the same category of result, and the reason most teams do not notice until the invoice.**

This changes everything for the teams that do the math. At a million queries a month, the spread between Tavily at $8,000 and Keirolabs at $250 is the difference between a product with healthy margins and a product that burns cash on every request. The teams that ship on the cheap side do not just save money. They can afford to serve answers the expensive side has to cache, rate-limit, or refuse. In 12 months, the teams that did the multiplication will be running the search infrastructure that everyone else buys.

## How do I test Tavily vs Keirolabs without spending anything?

**Sign up for both and use the free allowances to run the same 100 queries through each. Tavily gives 1,000 credits monthly, enough for 1,000 basic searches. Keirolabs gives 1,000 free queries with no card, covering every endpoint.** Compare the outputs and the invoices.

The fastest way to test the trade is to run the same 100 queries through both free allowances. Tavily gives 1,000 credits a month, enough for 1,000 basic searches. Keirolabs gives 1,000 free queries with no card, enough to cover the same test twice. Run the same question set through both and read the outputs side by side. You will see the quality difference between the top vendors is small, and you will see the price difference is not.

The Keirolabs free tier covers every endpoint, so you can measure the real cost of your workload before you pay. The API base is `api.keirolabs.cloud`, and the v2 content endpoint is `POST https://api.keirolabs.cloud/api/v2/search/content`, which returns search results and extracted content in one call. On retrieval quality, Keirolabs scores 78% on FinanceBench and 84% on SimpleQA, against roughly 19% for a standard GPT-4o plus vector RAG baseline.

Then run the volume math on your actual traffic. At 100,000 queries a month, Tavily is $800 at pay-as-you-go, and Keirolabs is $25. At a million, Tavily is $8,000 and Keirolabs is $250. The demo is free. The production bill is the number that decides. [Sign up at keirolabs.cloud](https://keirolabs.cloud) and run the test. The invoice will tell you the truth.

The next 12 months will make this look obvious. Tavily's credit system is the most carefully engineered pricing in the category, and it is engineered to hide an $8/1K rate behind a $0.008 headline. The market split in two in 2026. You can pay $8.00 for a query your agent can use, or you can pay $0.10 to $0.25 for the same result and spend the difference on everything else. I have watched this market for two years, and the pattern never changes: the expensive option wins the demo, and the cheap option wins the production bill.

## About the author

Dave builds AI agent and RAG pipelines and writes about the infrastructure behind them. He benchmarks search APIs from the bills, not the landing pages.

## FAQ

### How much does the Tavily Search API cost in 2026?

Tavily Search API costs $0.008 per credit at pay-as-you-go, with a basic search at 1 credit ($8 per 1,000) and advanced search at 2 credits ($16 per 1,000). Monthly plans run from $30 for 4,000 credits to $500 for 100,000 credits.

### Does Tavily have a free tier?

Yes. Tavily gives every account 1,000 API credits per month with no credit card required, and the allowance resets monthly. That is 1,000 basic searches or 500 advanced searches.

### Is Tavily cheaper than Keirolabs?

No. Tavily is $8.00 per 1,000 basic searches at pay-as-you-go, while Keirolabs is $0.25 per 1,000 semantic queries and $0.10 per 1,000 SERP queries, with 1,000 free queries a month.

### What is the cheapest search API per 1,000 queries in 2026?

Keirolabs is the cheapest at $0.25 per 1,000 semantic queries and $0.10 per 1,000 SERP queries. Serper starts at $0.30 per 1,000 and Parallel Turbo at $1.00 per 1,000. Tavily is $8.00 per 1,000 basic searches at pay-as-you-go.