Definition
An agent search budget calculator is a formula that estimates monthly search API costs for AI agents based on daily active users, average queries per session, and per-query API pricing, enabling teams to forecast spend before production deployment.
In Depth
The formula: monthly_budget = daily_users * sessions_per_user * queries_per_session * 30 * cost_per_query. For a consumer AI assistant with 1,000 daily users averaging 3 sessions with 4 searches each: 1,000 * 3 * 4 * 30 = 360,000 queries/month. At Scavio ($0.005/query): $1,800/mo. At Tavily Researcher ($0.03/query): $10,800/mo. At Brave ($0.005/query): $1,800/mo. At Perplexity Sonar ($0.005-0.012/query): $1,800-$4,320/mo. For a B2B internal tool with 50 daily users at 5 sessions with 6 searches: 50 * 5 * 6 * 30 = 45,000 queries/month. At Scavio: $225/mo. At Tavily Pro ($100/mo for ~3,333 queries, then overage): approximately $1,350/mo. The calculator reveals that per-query pricing (Scavio, Brave) scales linearly and predictably, while subscription tiers (Tavily, Linkup) have sharp cost cliffs at tier boundaries. Teams should also factor in a 20-30% buffer for query spikes and retry logic.
Example Usage
A startup estimated search costs for their AI research agent: 200 daily users, 2 sessions, 5 queries each = 60,000 queries/month. Scavio: $300/mo. Tavily Pro: $100/mo base but only 3,333 queries included, overage pushes to $1,700+/mo. They chose Scavio for predictable per-query pricing.
Platforms
Agent Search Budget Calculator is relevant across the following platforms, all accessible through Scavio's unified API:
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