Which is better for AI agents, Tavily or Brave Search API?

Brave was faster in every test cited here and lists $5 per 1,000 searches against Tavily's $8 pay as you go for basic search. Tavily led both of Grounder's benchmarks (85.8% against 84.4% on SimpleQA, 24.1% against 16.2% on SealQA), while AIMultiple ranked Brave first.

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

Tavily

• What it is: A search API priced in credits, with Extract, Map, Crawl and Research on the same key. Since July 2026 basic search returns reranked chunks per URL.
• 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: Led Brave on both Grounder benchmarks, offers raw content and an answer option, and bundles extraction and crawling.
• Limits: Slower than Brave in every test cited. Serverworks measured 6,043 ms for advanced search with full text, against 687 ms for Brave's LLM Context. Production keys need a paid plan. No crawler page.

Brave

• What it is: Search API on Brave's own crawled index, with a Web endpoint and an LLM Context endpoint that returns pre-extracted page chunks. Brave says every result comes from its own index.
• Pricing: $5 per 1,000 requests on the Search plan, with $5 of free credit each month.
• Strengths: Speed, a small token load, a 50 queries a second limit, and a larger share of official sources in Serverworks' top 5. Serverworks calls these its own judgments.
• Limits: Lower accuracy than Tavily in Grounder's run. Terms bar storing results without a storage-rights plan. No hosted MCP server found. A card is required for the free credit.

Pick Tavily when, pick Brave when

Pick Tavily when:

• You search, then extract, crawl or research with the same key. Serverworks suggests Brave for search and Tavily for extraction.
• You want raw page content or a generated answer in the response.
• Accuracy on Grounder's questions matters more than speed.

Pick Brave when:

• Latency and cost matter: 591 ms against 1.9 s, and $5 against $8 per 1,000.
• You want ranked page chunks (LLM Context) at the search price.
• You do not store results, or will buy storage rights.

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

How we compared

Criteria: output, price, free tier, accuracy, latency, tokens, endpoints, rate limits, MCP, storage terms, query data 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.

Latency is the steadiest difference across sources: Brave 521 to 669 ms, Tavily 806 ms to 1.9 s. Accuracy is not. AIMultiple (13 May 2026, from a December 2025 snapshot) ranked Brave first (14.89) and Tavily fifth (13.67) and called Brave's lead over Tavily the only gap in its test large enough to be meaningful. Serverworks measured from Japan on 6 April 2026 (5 queries, 10 runs each) and says its averages include the first, cold request. See also the best search API for AI agents.

FAQ

Is Tavily or Brave faster?

Brave, in every test cited. Grounder measured 591 ms against 1.9 s median search; Serverworks 521 ms against 806 ms; AIMultiple 669 ms against 998 ms.

Is Tavily or Brave cheaper?

Brave lists $5 per 1,000 searches. Tavily is $8 for basic search pay as you go and $7.50 on Project. Tavily advanced search costs two credits ($16 pay as you go).

Which is more accurate?

Tests disagree. Tavily led Grounder's run by 1.4 points on SimpleQA and 7.9 on SealQA. AIMultiple ranked Brave above Tavily.

Can I use both?

Yes. Serverworks suggests Brave for search and Tavily for extraction.

Do Tavily and Brave both have MCP servers?

Both are in the official MCP Registry. Tavily runs a hosted server and is in Claude's connectors directory. Brave publishes a local server you run yourself.

Next step

Your first 1,000 Grounder searches are free, up to 100 a day. No card needed. Add https://api.grounder.net/mcp to your client and sign in with Google, GitHub or Apple, or read the Docs. Already on Tavily or Brave? Grounder's drop-in endpoints take their request formats, but they accept only search keys made before 13 October 2026; no new keys are made, so a new account connects over MCP.