Tavily Search for AI Agents: What It Is, What It Costs and How to Add It
Tavily Search is a web search API made for AI agents. Instead of raw HTML, it returns clean, ranked text your agent can read directly. The free Researcher plan gives 1,000 credits a month with no card. Paid use starts at $30 a month for 4,000 credits, or $0.008 a credit pay as you go. Add it to a BetterClaw agent in one click.
What is Tavily Search?
Tavily Search is a web search API built for AI agents and LLM apps. Your agent sends a query and gets back ranked results as JSON: a title, URL, content pulled from each page and a relevance score. It can also ask for a short generated answer or the full page text. Because the agent reads that text directly, it skips the fetch-and-clean step a plain link list needs. Tavily bills in credits, and one basic search costs one credit.
Web search is the first skill most research agents need. For agent ideas that use it, see the best AI agents for personal use, and for building your own, see our AI agent frameworks comparison.
Tavily pricing and free tier
| Plan | Price | Credits | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Researcher | Free | 1,000 credits a month | No credit card required |
| Pay as you go | $0.008 per credit | Billed per credit used | Cancel anytime |
| Project | $30 a month | 4,000 credits a month | $0.0075 per credit, higher rate limits |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom rate limits, SLAs and security |
Larger monthly plans: Bootstrap at $100 for 15,000 credits, Startup at $220 for 38,000 and Growth at $500 for 100,000. Credits reset on the first day of each month. When they run out, requests stop until the reset unless you upgrade or use pay as you go.
What one credit buys
| Request | Credit cost |
|---|---|
| Search, basic depth | 1 credit per request |
| Search, advanced depth | 2 credits per request |
| Extract, basic / advanced | 1 / 2 credits per 5 successful URLs |
| Map | 1 credit per 10 pages (2 with instructions) |
| Crawl | Map cost plus extract cost |
| Research | 4 to 110 credits (mini), 15 to 250 credits (pro) |
Source: Tavily pricing page and API credits documentation, checked 10 November 2026. Failed extractions and failed map requests are not charged.
Tavily Search API vs Google and SerpAPI for agents
Here, Google means the Custom Search JSON API, the official way to get Google web results through an API. Google has closed it to new customers and points new projects to Vertex AI Search.
| Tavily Search API | SerpAPI | Google Custom Search JSON API | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 1,000 credits a month (about 1,000 basic searches) | 250 searches a month | 100 queries a day, existing customers only |
| Paid cost | $30 a month for 4,000 credits, or $0.008 a credit pay as you go | From $25 a month for 1,000 searches, up to $275 for 30,000 | $5 per 1,000 extra queries |
| Output format | JSON results with title, URL, page content and relevance score, plus an optional answer and full page text | JSON parsed from the search results page: links, snippets and other result blocks | JSON list of links and snippets from a Programmable Search Engine |
| Rate limits | 100 requests a minute on a development key, 1,000 on a production key | 50 searches an hour on Free, 200 on Starter, up to 6,000 on Big Data | Up to 10,000 queries a day |
| Availability | Open to new sign-ups | Open to new sign-ups | Closed to new customers; existing customers must move off by January 1, 2027 |
Sources: Tavily pricing and rate limit docs, SerpAPI pricing page, Google Custom Search JSON API overview, all checked 10 November 2026.
How to add Tavily Search to your agent
- 1
Get a Tavily API key. Sign up for the free Researcher plan (no card) and copy your API key from the Tavily dashboard.
- 2
Add the skill. In BetterClaw, open Settings, then Skills, and install Tavily Search. It is in the curated library on Pro and Business.
- 3
Paste the key. Bind your Tavily key as a secret for each agent that should search. You can create the secret inline when you enable the skill.
- 4
Test a search. Ask the agent a question that needs current information and check that the reply cites its sources.
- 5
Set a monthly credit cap. Tavily stops requests when your monthly credits run out. If you turn on pay as you go, set a pay-as-you-go limit in Tavily so a busy agent cannot run up a bill.
Full install options are in the BetterClaw skills docs, and the skills directory lists every audited skill.
What This Skill Does
Tavily Search is built specifically for AI agents. Unlike generic web browsing, Tavily returns AI-synthesized answers with source citations, structured content extraction, and relevance-ranked results. It includes five capabilities: tavily_search (fast web search), tavily_extract (pull structured content from URLs), tavily_crawl (crawl websites for data), tavily_map (map site structure), and tavily_research (multi-step research with synthesis). When you ask your agent to research a topic, debug an error, or find current pricing, Tavily returns structured, relevant results that the agent can reason about immediately.
Example workflow
Your research agent searches for competitor pricing updates every Monday morning, extracts structured data from their pricing pages, compares to your current data, and posts a formatted diff to your Notion workspace.
What Your Agent Can Do With Tavily Search
What Access This Skill Requires
Access granted
- Outbound web search (Tavily API only)
- URL content extraction
Explicitly excluded
- No file system access
- No local file access
- No credential access
- No email access
- No calendar access
- No credential storage access
Permissions pre-configured by our security team. Learn how our 4-layer review works.
Trust Level & Platforms
Recommended trust level
You can adjust the trust level up or down at any time.
Compatible platforms
Skills That Pair Well
GitHub
Google Workspace
Slack
n8n Workflow
Tavily Search: Common Questions
What is Tavily Search?
Tavily Search is a web search API built for AI agents and LLM apps. You send a query and get back ranked results as JSON, each with a title, URL, content pulled from the page and a relevance score. It can also return a short generated answer and the full page text, so an agent can read results directly instead of fetching and cleaning HTML.
Is Tavily free?
Yes, to start. The Researcher plan is free, gives 1,000 API credits a month and needs no credit card. A basic search costs 1 credit, so that covers about 1,000 basic searches or 500 advanced ones. Credits reset on the first day of each month. When they run out, requests stop until the reset unless you upgrade or use pay as you go.
How much does Tavily cost?
Pay as you go costs $0.008 per credit. Monthly plans start with Project at $30 for 4,000 credits, then Bootstrap at $100 for 15,000, Startup at $220 for 38,000 and Growth at $500 for 100,000. Enterprise pricing is custom. A basic search uses 1 credit and an advanced search uses 2, so your bill depends on search depth.
What is the Tavily Search API?
It is the search endpoint of the Tavily REST API. You call it with an API key and a query, plus options such as search depth, maximum results, and whether to include an answer or the raw page content. Tavily also offers Extract, Crawl, Map and Research endpoints that draw on the same credit balance, along with Python and JavaScript SDKs.
Is Tavily better than Google search for agents?
For most agents, Tavily is the simpler choice. The Google Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers, and existing customers must move off it by January 1, 2027. It also returns links and snippets, so the agent must fetch and clean each page itself. Tavily returns page content and relevance scores in one call, which saves those extra steps.
How do I add Tavily to an AI agent?
On BetterClaw, open Settings, then Skills, and install Tavily Search. Bind your Tavily API key as a secret for each agent that should use it, then ask the agent a question that needs current information to test it. In your own code, install the Tavily Python or JavaScript SDK and pass your API key to the client.
Is Tavily Search included with BetterClaw?
Tavily Search is part of BetterClaw's curated skill library, which is available on Pro ($49/mo) and Business ($149/mo). The Free and Starter plans include Basic skills only. You bring your own Tavily API key, and the free Tavily Researcher plan (1,000 credits a month) covers light use. The skill is security-audited and runs in a sandboxed environment.
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