Tavily
Ranked 7 of 12 search APIs by recommenders
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.
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.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works with AI agents
“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”
Comment from 27 Sep 2026 in “When did Google get so weird?” “Process trigger is hourly industry news collection and selection, via Tavily and RSS feeds.”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: We automated market Intel with a Statista-like engine for fashion” “Pair it with good search skills (Tavily, Brave, Exa)”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “Running local models is good now” Good search result quality
“if you're going paid, Parallel, Firecrawl, Tavily and Exa are all pretty good now”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “DeepSeek search and fetch – $0.75 per 1000 successful requests” “I’ve had good results with Tavily so far”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “GLM 5.2 and the coming AI margin collapse” “Exa and tavily #1, brave #2, searx last”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “DeepSeek search and fetch – $0.75 per 1000 successful requests” Free tier for searches
“Brave, Exa, and Tavily all offer a free tier for websearch”
Comment from 22 May 2026 in “DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent” “costs nothing I get 1000 searches a month”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork”
Other search APIs people recommend
The four most recommended other search APIs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exa | 33 | 9 | 79% | 10 | — | Approved |
| SerpApi | 16 | 10 | 62% | 8 | — | — |
| Brave Search API | 15 | 3 | 83% | 7 | — | Approved |
| DeepSeek search API | 15 | 7 | 68% | 1 | — | — |
| TavilyThis page | 9 | 1 | 90% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
All 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“if you're going paid, Parallel, Firecrawl, Tavily and Exa are all pretty good now”
“Exa and tavily #1, brave #2, searx last”
“Easy to use cli with a skill.”
“Process trigger is hourly industry news collection and selection, via Tavily and RSS feeds.”
“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”
“costs nothing I get 1000 searches a month”
“I’ve had good results with Tavily so far”
“Pair it with good search skills (Tavily, Brave, Exa)”
“Brave, Exa, and Tavily all offer a free tier for websearch”
“we may use certain portions of your query data to improve our responses to future queries”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.