Tavily vs Firecrawl: search and read pages for agents
Published prices compared, with the arithmetic shown. Last checked . Prices only: we have not tested reliability, speed or output quality.
At a glance
| Tavily | Firecrawl | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | search and serp apis | scraping apis |
| Free tier | 1,000 API credits/month, no card. Free for students; 100k free credits advertised for startup-program applicants. | 1,000 credits/month, no card (about 1,000 pages or 500 searches), 2 concurrent requests. |
| Entry paid price | from $30/mo | from $19/mo |
| MCP / agent support | Yes | Yes |
| Verification | full verification | full verification |
| Official pricing page | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) |
| Visit vendor | Official site (opens official site in a new tab) | Try Firecrawl Sponsored / affiliate link (opens in a new tab) Firecrawl official site (plain link) (opens official site in a new tab) Affiliate link: FetchIndex may earn a commission. Disclosure |
Analysis
Agent builders often need two things: find pages (search) and read them (scrape/extract). Tavily started from search and added extraction; Firecrawl started from scraping and added search. Their published prices let you compare both halves.
Search
- Firecrawl search is 2 credits per 10 results: $1.66 per 1,000 searches on Standard ($83/month billed annually) and $6.40 on Hobby (annual price).
- Tavily basic search is 1 credit: $8.00 pay-as-you-go, $7.50 on Project, $5.00 on Growth ($500).
On those numbers Firecrawl search is cheaper from the Standard plan up, but the two products return different things (Tavily offers an answer-oriented advanced search at 2 credits; Firecrawl's search can pair with scraping each result at 1 credit per page), so compare outputs on your own queries.
Reading pages
- Tavily basic extract: 1 credit per 5 URLs = $1.60 per 1,000 URLs pay-as-you-go, $1.00 on Growth.
- Firecrawl scrape: 1 credit per page = $0.83 per 1,000 on Standard.
Tavily's extract is cheaper than Firecrawl on small plans ($1.60 pay-as-you-go versus $3.80 per 1,000 on Firecrawl Hobby billed monthly), but at volume Firecrawl pulls ahead: Tavily Growth is $1.00 against Firecrawl Standard's $0.83 and Firecrawl Scale's $0.599 (annual prices).
Free tiers and agent support
Tavily: 1,000 credits/month, no card, free for students. Firecrawl: 1,000 credits/month, no card. Both document MCP servers.
Verdict
If search is your main call and you want answer-style results, Tavily's focused product and generous free tier fit. If you read a lot of pages or crawl whole sites, Firecrawl's per-page credit gets cheaper as you scale and covers both halves under one balance. Many teams use both.
Price ladders from the data
Effective price per unit at each published plan (monthly spend shown). Overage and assumption-based rows are excluded here; see each vendor page.
AI/agent search query
Tavily
- $8.00 Pay as you go · pay as you go
- $16.00 Pay as you go (advanced search) · pay as you go
- $7.50 Project · $30/mo
- $6.67 Bootstrap · $100/mo
- $5.79 Startup · $220/mo
- $5.00 Growth · $500/mo
- $10.00 Growth (advanced search) · $500/mo
Firecrawl
- $6.40 Hobby (annual) · $16/mo
- $1.66 Standard (annual) · $83/mo
URL to LLM-ready content
Tavily
- $1.60 Pay as you go · pay as you go
- $1.00 Growth · $500/mo
Firecrawl
- $0.83 Standard (annual) · $83/mo
What we could not verify
- Tavily: Pricing page shows the Project slider ($30/4,000 credits); Bootstrap/Startup/Growth come from the official docs credits page.
- Firecrawl: Stealth/enhanced proxy credit cost is not stated on the pricing page; not computed.; Monthly-billed prices not shown on the page (only annual-billed).