Agent Search Pricing War: Full Comparison May 2026

The agent search API market in May 2026 has five serious contenders: Scavio, Tavily, Brave, Linkup, and Perplexity Sonar. Pricing has compressed dramatically over the past year as providers compete for agent framework integrations. Here is the full comparison with real numbers.

Pricing table: May 2026

• Scavio: 250 free/mo, $30/mo for 7K credits, $0.005/credit overage. Multi-platform (Google, Bing, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit)
• Tavily: 1K free/mo, $30/mo Researcher tier. Google-focused with extract feature
• Brave: $5/1K queries, $5 free credit/month (was unlimited free until Feb 2026). Web search only
• Linkup: EUR 5/1K standard queries. Web search with source verification
• Perplexity Sonar: $5/1K for Sonar, $12/1K for Sonar Pro. Includes LLM-synthesized answers

Cost per 10K queries/month

providers = {
    "Scavio":    {"free": 250,  "paid_rate": 0.005, "plan_cost": 30, "plan_credits": 7000},
    "Tavily":    {"free": 1000, "paid_rate": 0.03,  "plan_cost": 30, "plan_credits": 1000},
    "Brave":     {"free": 0,    "paid_rate": 0.005, "plan_cost": 0,  "plan_credits": 0},
    "Linkup":    {"free": 0,    "paid_rate": 0.005, "plan_cost": 0,  "plan_credits": 0},
    "Sonar":     {"free": 0,    "paid_rate": 0.005, "plan_cost": 0,  "plan_credits": 0},
    "Sonar Pro": {"free": 0,    "paid_rate": 0.012, "plan_cost": 0,  "plan_credits": 0},
}

target = 10000
for name, p in providers.items():
    if p["plan_credits"] > 0:
        if target <= p["plan_credits"]:
            cost = p["plan_cost"]
        else:
            overage = target - p["plan_credits"]
            cost = p["plan_cost"] + (overage * p["paid_rate"])
    else:
        paid_queries = max(0, target - p["free"])
        cost = paid_queries * p["paid_rate"]
    print(f"{name}: ${cost:.2f}/mo for {target:,} queries")

What each provider does differently

Price alone does not capture the differences. Each provider optimizes for a different use case:

• Scavio: multi-platform search (Google + TikTok + YouTube + Reddit) in one API. Best for agents that need cross-platform data
• Tavily: extract feature pulls full page content. Best for RAG pipelines needing page text
• Brave: simple web search, fast response times. Best for basic grounding
• Linkup: source verification built in. Best for fact-checking workflows
• Perplexity Sonar: includes LLM synthesis. Best when you want pre-processed answers, not raw results

Framework integration status

How each provider integrates with major agent frameworks:

• LangChain: all five have official or community tool integrations
• LangGraph: Tavily and Scavio have dedicated tool definitions
• CrewAI: Tavily and Brave have built-in support
• MCP: Scavio and Tavily have hosted MCP endpoints
• n8n: all five accessible via HTTP Request node

# LangChain tool example with Scavio
from langchain_core.tools import tool
import requests, os

@tool
def web_search(query: str) -> str:
    """Search the web for current information."""
    resp = requests.post(
        "https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/search",
        headers={"x-api-key": os.environ["SCAVIO_API_KEY"]},
        json={"query": query, "num_results": 5},
    )
    results = resp.json().get("organic_results", [])
    return "\n".join(
        f"{r['title']}: {r['snippet']}" for r in results
    )

The pricing war trajectory

Prices dropped 30-50% across all providers between May 2025 and May 2026. The trend will continue as competition intensifies. Expect per-query costs to settle around $0.003-0.005 for basic web search by end of 2026. Multi-platform and enriched data will command a premium.

Recommendation by use case

• Budget-constrained side project: Scavio or Brave (both $0.005/query)
• RAG pipeline needing full page text: Tavily (extract feature)
• Cross-platform monitoring: Scavio (only multi-platform option at this price)
• Pre-processed answers for chatbots: Perplexity Sonar
• Fact-checking workflows: Linkup (source verification)