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Tavily vs Firecrawl. Rows marked Differs have different values.

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Tavily

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Firecrawl

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TypeStartupStartup
CategoriesDiffers
In one lineSearch and extraction API optimized for LLMs and agents.Turn websites into clean, LLM-ready markdown.
Stage & funding——
GitHub stars——
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Language——
Last push——
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Pros
  • DocsSimple credit pricing: 1,000 free credits a month with no card, and a basic search costs 1 credit.[1]
  • DocsWidely adopted: Nebius cites a developer community of over a million users, and customers including IBM, Cohere and Groq.[1]
  • User reportsUsers rate its results alongside Exa's and like its easy CLI and skill.[1][2][3]
  • DocsOne API covers search, extract, map, crawl and research, and failed URL extractions are never charged.[1]
  • MetadataVery popular (about 197k GitHub stars) and actively maintained, with a core you can self-host.[1]
  • User reportsTurns pages into clean, LLM-ready Markdown; builders use it in production scraping pipelines and recommend it alongside Exa.[1][2]
  • User reportsSelf-hosting works well for one agent user who does not need the cloud-only features.[1]
  • DocsThe free plan gives 1,000 credits a month with no card, and Hobby is $16/month billed yearly for 5,000 credits.[1]
Cons
  • DocsNebius, an AI cloud company, agreed to acquire it in February 2026, so roadmap and pricing may follow Nebius's platform priorities.[1]
  • Independent testA competitor's open NEEDLE benchmark puts Tavily below Parallel, Exa and DeepSeek search on quality.[1]
  • DocsResearch requests are priced dynamically at 15-250 credits each on the pro model, and pay-as-you-go costs $0.008 per credit.[1]
  • User reportsIt is a hosted-only API, so 'self-hosted' agent stacks that use it still need an external key.[1]
  • DocsAGPL-3.0, and the default self-hosted stack has no Fire-engine anti-bot, no screenshots, no page actions and no Agent or Browser features. Its quickstart turns API auth off and has no high availability.[1][2]
  • DocsUnused credits roll over only on Scale and Enterprise, and the JSON, Question and Highlight formats add 4 credits per page.[1]
  • User reportsSite operators complain about its traffic: one said Firecrawl customers caused 95% of their bandwidth overage and that it is not a 'verified bot'.[1]
  • User reportsA competitor says it often struggles with heavy SPAs and hardened anti-bot walls such as Turnstile and DataDome.[1]
  • User reportsA privacy-focused user lists Firecrawl among the providers that keep request logs.[1]
Best forAgent builders who want one simple API for search and page extraction that is cheap to start with.Agents and RAG pipelines that need web pages as clean Markdown at moderate volume.
Watch out forWatch for pricing and roadmap changes after the Nebius deal, and cap how many credits research requests can use.Expect blocks on protected sites, and check the AGPL terms before you embed it.
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