Which is better for AI agents, Tavily or Exa?

Exa answered more questions right in Grounder's benchmark (88.4% against 85.8% on SimpleQA, 31.5% against 24.1% on SealQA) but sent the model 5.2k tokens a question against Tavily's 3.0k on SimpleQA. Pick Exa for accuracy per search; pick Tavily for crawl and map endpoints and a lighter token load.

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. Nebius announced the purchase on 10 February 2026 and said the brand continues.
• Pricing: Search costs 1 credit (basic) or 2 (advanced). Pay as you go is $0.008 a credit.
• Strengths: Fewer answer tokens per question than Exa in Grounder's run, a published production limit, and documented integrations with LangChain, LlamaIndex, the Vercel AI SDK and others.
• Limits: Lower accuracy than Exa in Grounder's run. Production keys need a paid plan. No crawler page. The default of its "Allow Use of Query Data" setting is not stated.

Exa

• What it is: Search on its own index using embeddings, from lite to deep, with company, people and news categories and a Contents endpoint for highlights or text. The first 10 results' contents are included (Exa changelog, 3 March 2026).
• Pricing: $4, $7 or $12 per 1,000 searches by type, for up to 10 results; each result above 10 costs $1 per 1,000 results.
• Strengths: Higher accuracy than Tavily in Grounder's run, a top Artificial Analysis score, and a crawler site owners can verify.
• Limits: The most tokens per question in the run. The top Artificial Analysis score uses Dynamic Highlights, a preview needing a beta header; a 2 September 2026 snapshot listed auto at 74. Exa deprecated its /research endpoint in April 2026. Zero data retention is Enterprise only.

Pick Tavily when, pick Exa when

Pick Tavily when:

• You want search, extraction, crawling and site mapping behind one credit-priced API.
• Token cost matters: 3.0k against 5.2k per question on SimpleQA.
• You want its documented framework integrations.

Pick Exa when:

• Accuracy per search matters more than token cost: 2.6 points higher on SimpleQA and 7.4 points higher on SealQA.
• You search for companies or people, where Exa has dedicated categories.
• You need a documented crawler or zero data retention on Enterprise.

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

How we compared

Criteria: price, free tier, accuracy, latency, tokens, endpoints, rate limits, MCP, data policy, 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.

Independent tests differ. Artificial Analysis (19 October 2026, same answer model for every provider) lists Exa and not Tavily; a 2 September 2026 snapshot gave Tavily basic 66. AIMultiple (13 May 2026, from a December 2025 snapshot) ranked Exa third (14.39, about 1.2 s) and Tavily fifth (13.67, 998 ms) and called the top four, which did not include Tavily, statistically equal. See also the best search API for AI agents.

FAQ

Which is better for AI agents, Tavily or Exa?

Neither wins everywhere. Exa was more accurate in Grounder's run; Tavily sent fewer tokens and bundles crawl and map. Pick by what your agent needs most.

How do Tavily and Exa prices compare?

Tavily basic search is $8 per 1,000 pay as you go; Exa auto is $7 per 1,000 for up to 10 results. Tavily gives 1,000 free credits a month; Exa gives $10 of credits, about 1,400 auto searches.

Do Tavily and Exa both have MCP servers?

Yes. Both run hosted servers and list in Claude's connectors directory. Exa's works with no key at a rate limit; Tavily's takes a key or OAuth and has a separate keyless mode.

Does Nebius owning Tavily change anything?

Nebius announced the purchase on 10 February 2026, and its filing records the close on 19 February. The announcement said Tavily continues under its brand and said nothing about pricing, the API or data policy; Tavily's changelog lists no price change.

Are these accuracy numbers independent?

No. Grounder ran the benchmark. Artificial Analysis and AIMultiple are separate tests with their own methods.

Next step

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