Search API Pricing After the Tavily Acquisition

After Nebius acquired Tavily in February 2026, the search API market pricing dynamics shifted. Here is the full pricing comparison across five major providers: Tavily, Scavio, Exa, SerpAPI, and Brave Search API. The best value depends on your volume and whether you need multi-platform data or just web search.

Pricing table: May 2026

• Tavily (Nebius): 1K free/mo. $30/mo Researcher (included searches unspecified post-acquisition). Per-query overage rates pending
• Scavio: 250 free/mo. $30/mo for 7K credits. $0.005/credit overage. Multi-platform: Google, Bing, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit
• Exa: 1K free/mo. $5/1K requests. Semantic search with neural retrieval
• SerpAPI: 100 free/mo. $25/mo for 1K searches. $75/mo for 5K. Google SERP parsing
• Brave: $5/1K queries. No free tier (killed early 2026). Web search only

Cost per volume tier

volumes = [1000, 5000, 10000, 25000]

providers = {
    "Scavio": lambda v: 0 if v <= 250 else 30 if v <= 7000 else 30 + (v - 7000) * 0.005,
    "Tavily": lambda v: 0 if v <= 1000 else 30 + max(0, v - 1000) * 0.03,
    "Exa": lambda v: 0 if v <= 1000 else (v - 1000) * 0.005,
    "SerpAPI": lambda v: (
        0 if v <= 100
        else 25 if v <= 1000
        else 75 if v <= 5000
        else 75 + (v - 5000) * 0.015
    ),
    "Brave": lambda v: v * 0.005,
}

for vol in volumes:
    print(f"\n--- {vol:,} queries/month ---")
    for name, calc in providers.items():
        cost = calc(vol)
        per_query = cost / vol if vol > 0 else 0
        print(f"  {name}: ${cost:.2f}/mo (${per_query:.4f}/query)")

What each provider gives you for the money

Scavio ($0.005/credit effective)

Multi-platform search across Google, Bing, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit in a single API. Best value at mid-volume (5K-10K/mo) because the $30 plan includes 7K credits. The only provider offering TikTok and YouTube search at this price point.

Tavily ($0.03/query overage)

Post-acquisition pricing details remain in flux. The Extract feature (full page content retrieval) is Tavily's unique advantage for RAG pipelines. However, overage rates are significantly higher than competitors, making it expensive above the plan limit.

Exa ($0.005/query)

Neural/semantic search rather than keyword-based. Returns results based on meaning rather than exact keyword matches. Best for RAG pipelines where you want conceptually similar content. Weakest for queries requiring exact, current factual data.

SerpAPI ($0.015-0.025/query effective)

The most comprehensive Google SERP parser: knowledge panels, local packs, shopping results, featured snippets all parsed to JSON. Most expensive per query but gives the most SERP features. Best for SEO tools and competitive analysis.

Brave ($0.005/query)

Simple web search with fast response times. No free tier anymore, so you pay from query one. No multi-platform search, no SERP feature parsing. Cheapest option if you just need basic web results and want per-query pricing without a monthly plan.

Best value by use case

• AI agent grounding (general): Scavio or Brave at $0.005/query. Scavio wins if you need multi-platform
• RAG with full page extraction: Tavily (Extract feature) or Exa (semantic matching)
• SEO tools and rank tracking: SerpAPI (most complete SERP parsing)
• Cross-platform monitoring: Scavio (only option covering TikTok + YouTube + Reddit)
• Budget prototype: Tavily free tier (1K/mo) or Exa free tier (1K/mo)

The acquisition pricing risk

Tavily's current pricing was set during its independent growth phase. Acquisitions historically lead to price increases within 12-18 months as the parent company optimizes for revenue over user growth. If you are building on Tavily's free tier or $30 plan, have a migration plan ready. The other providers have not been acquired and are still in their growth-pricing phase.

Quick migration test

import requests, os

def test_provider_switch():
    """Compare results from two providers for the same query."""
    query = "best python web framework 2026"

    # Scavio
    scavio_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},
    )
    scavio_results = scavio_resp.json().get("organic_results", [])

    print("Scavio results:")
    for r in scavio_results:
        print(f"  {r['title']}")

    # Compare overlap, result quality, response time
    print(f"\nScavio: {len(scavio_results)} results, "
          f"{scavio_resp.elapsed.total_seconds():.2f}s")

test_provider_switch()

Bottom line

At the $30/month price point, Scavio delivers the most queries (7K credits) with multi-platform coverage. Tavily's post-acquisition pricing is the wild card to watch. For pure web search at scale, Brave and Exa match Scavio on per-query cost but lack multi-platform support. Choose based on platform needs first and price second.