Best Search Provider for AI Agents: 2026 Poll Results
OpenClaw community asked: what web search provider do you use? Tavily, Serper, Brave, Scavio, Sonar. The right answer depends on platform coverage, output format, and cost per query.
An r/openclaw thread asked: "What is your preferred web search provider for your agent?" The replies covered the usual suspects: Tavily, SerpAPI, Brave, Serper, and Perplexity Sonar. The honest answer depends on three variables: what platforms you need, what output format you want, and how much you pay per query.
The 2026 search API landscape for agents
- Tavily: $0.0075/query, Google-focused, includes LLM-generated answer field, LangChain native. Now owned by Nebius.
- SerpAPI: $0.015/query ($75/5K), multi-engine, most complete SERP parsing. In active litigation with Google.
- Serper: $0.001/query ($50/50K), Google-only, fastest response time, no Reddit/YouTube.
- Brave Search API: $0.005/query, own index (not Google), privacy-focused.
- Exa: $0.007/query, neural search, good for semantic similarity, less good for exact factual queries.
- Scavio: $0.005/query ($30/7K), multi-platform (Google, Reddit, YouTube, Amazon, Walmart), MCP native.
- Perplexity Sonar: $5/1K requests + token costs, bundled search + inference.
Decision matrix
If you only need Google results and want the lowest cost per query: Serper. If you need multi-platform search with MCP support: Scavio. If you want bundled search + answer generation: Tavily or Sonar. If you want your own index independent of Google: Brave. If you need the most complete SERP parsing: SerpAPI (with the litigation caveat).
What the poll results reveal
The most popular choices in the thread were Tavily (LangChain ecosystem) and Serper (cost). But popularity does not equal fit. The right provider depends on your agent's workload. A research agent that searches Reddit and YouTube has different needs than a coding agent that only searches Google for docs.
# Test any search provider in 30 seconds via MCP
claude mcp add scavio https://mcp.scavio.dev/mcp \
--header "x-api-key: $SCAVIO_API_KEY"
# Then ask Claude: "Search Reddit for best CRM tools 2026"
# Compare the result quality with your current providerThe honest recommendation
Try two providers on your actual workload for a week. The pricing pages and feature lists do not capture result quality differences, which vary by query type and platform. A $0.001/query provider that returns irrelevant results costs more than a $0.005/query provider that returns the right answer on the first call.