Tavily vs Exa in 2026: which search API should your agent use?

Which is cheaper, Tavily or Exa?

It depends on volume. At 100,000 searches a month, Tavily's Growth plan ($500 for 100,000 credits) puts a basic search at $5.00 per 1,000, below Exa's flat $7. At 10,000 a month, Tavily's least expensive route is the $30 Project plan plus pay-as-you-go at $0.008 per credit: about $7.80 per 1,000, a little above Exa.

Above 100,000, Tavily's self-serve plans end, so extra searches go at the $8 pay-as-you-go rate. At 1 million a month that averages $7.70. Exa stays at $7, with volume discounts on Enterprise contracts.

These figures assume Tavily adds no credits for raw page content, as its credits page lists none. Exa includes text for 10 results; Tavily returns raw content for the results you ask for.

What does each return in one call?

Tavily returns, for each result, a title, URL, a content snippet or reranked chunks, a relevance score and, on request, the cleaned raw page. It can add a short written answer and images. Filters cover news or finance topics, time ranges, dates, up to 300 included domains, country and language.

Exa returns titles, URLs and, by default for 10 results, the page text, with highlights and summaries on request. Its filters go further on meaning: categories such as companies, research papers or people, plus published dates and up to 1,200 domains. Exa's lite mode uses cached content; Tavily does not document a cache-only mode.

When should I choose Tavily, and when Exa?

Choose Tavily if you want a free tier without a payment method, a written answer in the same call, or a research endpoint. It is also the most integrated: its docs present it as LangChain's recommended search tool, and OpenClaw ships it as a built-in provider.

Choose Exa if your queries are about meaning, such as "companies building battery recycling robots", or you need many results per call. Its own index, category filters and up to 100 results suit discovery and lead-generation agents. Exa's x402 price matches its API price, which helps agents that pay per call.

Where does LLMWebSearch fit next to Tavily and Exa?

LLMWebSearch is a third option for agents that need live results and page text at a lower price per search, paid in crypto. One credit returns up to 20 results and reads the top 3 pages as Markdown: $1.85/1K searches on the smallest pack, $1.45/1K searches at 100,000 searches and $1.20/1K searches at 1 million.

It does less than either: no free tier, no written answer, no semantic index, no research endpoint. In return, credits never expire, no card or documents are needed, and our reader respects robots.txt. The price table compares 12 providers on the same unit.