Which is better for AI agents, Perplexity or Tavily?

In Grounder's benchmark Perplexity Search beat Tavily on accuracy, latency and tokens: 96.0% against 85.8% on SimpleQA, 35.6% against 24.1% on SealQA, and 275 ms against 1.9 s median search. Tavily's case is breadth: extract, map, crawl and research endpoints and 1,000 free credits a month.

Last checked: 20 October 2026. Disclosure: Grounder (grounder.net) publishes this page, sends searches to both providers and ran the benchmark cited here.

Quick pick

What changed with Sonar

Perplexity Sonar wrote answers, while Tavily returns evidence, so a Sonar against Tavily comparison was never like for like. Perplexity ended support for Sonar Chat Completions on 27 September 2026 and moved it into its Agent API. This page compares Perplexity's Search API, which returns ranked results, with Tavily Search.

Perplexity

• What it is: A Search API on Perplexity's web index (POST /search), plus an Agent API for model-backed answers and tools. Up to five queries in one request count as one billed request.
• Pricing: $5 per 1,000 requests; Fast search is $1. Failed and rate-limited requests are not billed.
• Strengths: Led Tavily on accuracy, latency and tokens in Grounder's run, with a 275 ms median search on SimpleQA. Artificial Analysis scores it 80. A 50 queries a second limit at every tier and an OAuth MCP server.
• Limits: No free tier published. Perplexity's privacy page says zero data retention is not the default, while its FAQ says the API keeps no query data by default. AIMultiple's table lists it seventh of eight, without naming the endpoint it tested. Publishers have sued Perplexity (Dow Jones and the New York Post in October 2024, the New York Times in December 2025); these are allegations, and we found no ruling on the merits.

Tavily

• What it is: A search API priced in credits, with Extract, Map, Crawl and Research on the same key.
• Pricing: Search costs 1 credit (basic) or 2 (advanced). Pay as you go is $0.008 a credit; Project is $30 for 4,000 credits.
• Strengths: 1,000 free credits a month, a keyless access mode, bundled extraction and crawling, and a hosted MCP server listed in Claude's connectors directory.
• Limits: Lower accuracy and higher latency than Perplexity in Grounder's run. Up to twice the answer tokens per question. Production keys need a paid plan. No crawler page.

Pick Perplexity when, pick Tavily when

Pick Perplexity when:

• Accuracy and speed per search matter most: 96.0% and 275 ms on SimpleQA in Grounder's run.
• You want a low token load: 1.5k against 3.0k per question.
• You want a $1 Fast search option and a high rate limit.

Pick Tavily when:

• You need extract, map, crawl or research endpoints on the same key (Perplexity's Agent API does model-backed research, priced per token).
• You want a free tier to build on, or raw page content in the response.
• You want a hosted MCP server listed in Claude's connectors directory; Perplexity's docs have you add its server as a custom connector.

Grounder lists both providers and can send each question to either; pin one with requested_provider.

How we compared

Criteria: what each returns, price, free tier, accuracy, latency, tokens, endpoints, rate limits, MCP, query data, crawler and owner. Vendor facts come from each vendor's own pages, read on 20 October 2026.

Accuracy, latency and tokens come from Grounder's benchmark (as of 20 October 2026): 887 questions from SimpleQA and SealQA, run 8 to 13 October 2026, each provider on its default search, top 10 results within 60 seconds, GLM-5.3-Flash answering from those results alone, graded with OpenAI's SimpleQA grader. It is one run by a vendor that also sells access to both providers. Grounder's routing was tuned on these same searches; the provider rows are plain default searches. Method and live tables: /benchmarks.

Artificial Analysis (19 October 2026, same answer model for every provider) lists Perplexity at 80 and not Tavily; a 2 September 2026 snapshot gave Tavily basic 66. AIMultiple (13 May 2026, from a December 2025 snapshot) disagrees: it listed Perplexity seventh of eight and Tavily fifth. See also the best search API for AI agents.

FAQ

Should I use Perplexity or Tavily for an AI agent?

In Grounder's run Perplexity was more accurate, faster and lighter in tokens. Choose Tavily if you need its extraction, map, crawl and research endpoints or its free tier.

Is Perplexity Sonar still available?

Support for Sonar Chat Completions ended on 27 September 2026. Perplexity's Agent API replaces it. For raw search results, use the Search API this page compares.

How do Perplexity and Tavily prices compare?

Perplexity Search is $5 per 1,000 requests, or $1 with Fast search. Tavily basic search is $8 per 1,000 pay as you go and $7.50 on Project. Tavily gives 1,000 free credits a month; Perplexity publishes no free tier.

Which is more accurate, Perplexity or Tavily?

Perplexity, in Grounder's run (96.0% against 85.8% on SimpleQA). Artificial Analysis lists Perplexity at 80; a 2 September 2026 snapshot of its index gave Tavily basic 66, and Tavily is not in the 19 October table. Grounder ran its benchmark and Artificial Analysis ran its own.

Does Perplexity respect robots.txt?

Perplexity says PerplexityBot is for search and not for AI foundation models, and that Perplexity-User, which fetches pages at a user's request, generally ignores robots.txt. See search APIs and robots.txt.

Next step

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