# Tavily

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Tavily and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a search API for AI agents, with a free tier of 1000 searches monthly. Caveat: one critic notes it may use query data to improve its responses.

## Why people recommend it

- Works with AI agents (3 comments): "I've since given my agent access to Exa, Tavily, and SearXNG so it can filter through today's low quality search results for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49871581)) "Process trigger is hourly industry news collection and selection, via Tavily and RSS feeds." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50116889)) "Pair it with good search skills (Tavily, Brave, Exa)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557434))
- Good search result quality (3 comments): "if you're going paid, Parallel, Firecrawl, Tavily and Exa are all pretty good now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144703)) "I’ve had good results with Tavily so far" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48813014)) "Exa and tavily #1, brave #2, searx last" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50139972))
- Free tier for searches (2 comments): "Brave, Exa, and Tavily all offer a free tier for websearch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48242411)) "costs nothing I get 1000 searches a month" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160059))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Exa](https://hackerapproved.com/p/exa.md): 33 recommend
- [SerpApi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/serpapi.md): 16 recommend
- [Brave Search API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brave-search-api.md): 15 recommend
- [DeepSeek search API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-search-and-fetch.md): 15 recommend
- [Kagi Search API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kagi-search-api.md): 10 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.tavily.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Tavily", https://hackerapproved.com/p/tavily/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).