Tavily alternatives
An LLM-shaped retrieval layer returning cleaned, ranked, cited chunks rather than raw SERPs. Acquired by Nebius in February 2026.
Verified 5 August 2026·Figures from vendors' own pages
Acquired by Nebius Group for $275M, February 2026Tavily at a glance
- Vendor
- Nebius Group
- Category
- Retrieval layers
- Own index
- No — No publicly documented independent web index
- Price per 1,000
- $8
- Free tier
- 1,000 credits per month, no card required
- MCP server
- Yes
- Graph traversal
- No
- Coverage transparency
- No
- Funding
- $25M
- Investors
- Insight Partners, Alpha Wave Global
Pricing detail. Credit-based at $0.008 per credit pay-as-you-go. A basic search is 1 credit (~$8 per 1,000), an advanced search 2 credits (~$16 per 1,000), and a deep research request 4 to 250 credits.
The alternatives
unlob
$0.40/1kOur own index, admitted rather than ranked. Metadata-only passage hits, six coverage-graph traversal tools, an MCP server, and an endpoint that tells you why any URL is or is not in the index. Smaller than the well-funded incumbents, and considerably cheaper than all of them.
Linkup
A French grounding API returning structured, citation-carrying content for LLMs, with a sub-second "fast" tier and native parallel search.
Valyu
A London deep-search API spanning web plus licensed proprietary sources, with content attribution and pay-per-use monetisation for publishers.
DataForSEO
$0.60/1kIndustrial SERP infrastructure built for SEO tooling rather than agents. The cheapest per query in the field, with the lowest-level API to match.
Parallel Search
$1/1kA suite of web search, extraction and research APIs on a proprietary index, from the former Twitter CEO. The closest competitor to unlob by thesis.
Serper
$1/1kThe cheapest way to get raw Google results into an agent. Fast, minimal, and entirely dependent on Google continuing to be scrapeable.
Brave Search API
$5/1kA genuinely independent index of 40B+ pages, sold as a conventional search API with an LLM-context option. Long the default independent choice.
Free developer tier removed February 2026
Google Custom Search JSON API
$5/1kGoogle's own programmable search endpoint. Real Google results, a hard 10,000/day ceiling, and terms written for site search rather than agents.
Exa
$7/1kNeural, embeddings-first search over a proprietary index, sold alongside content extraction, answers and agentic research products.
Sources
- Tavily pricingread 5 August 2026
- Tavily raises $25Mread 5 August 2026
- Tavily company profileread 5 August 2026
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Tavily?
It depends what you are replacing. If you need an independent index at the lowest price, unlob is $0.40 per 1,000 queries against Tavily's $8. If you need the largest possible index, Tavily may still be the right tool — we say so on our comparison page rather than pretending otherwise.
Who owns Tavily now?
Acquired by Nebius Group for $275M, February 2026. The service continues to operate under its new owner.
Does Tavily own its own web index?
No — No publicly documented independent web index. That is a legitimate architecture, but it means the product depends on an upstream provider it does not control.
How much does Tavily cost?
Credit-based at $0.008 per credit pay-as-you-go. A basic search is 1 credit (~$8 per 1,000), an advanced search 2 credits (~$16 per 1,000), and a deep research request 4 to 250 credits.
Try the cheapest own-index alternative
10,000 free requests a month, no card. Test coverage and latency against your own queries before you commit to anything.