Tavily alternatives
Tavily alternatives, tested on one Wikipedia page: Tavily’s extract returned 97,504 tokens for the Rust article. FATSEARCH answered the same question in 1,384, 70× less context. Firecrawl, Jina Reader, Oxylabs and Bright Data are in the table too.
We make FATSEARCH. The numbers below are our own runs, dated. Where another reader is the better pick, we say so.
| One page, | 38 hard pages, | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reader | Tokens in context | Answer found | Model bill | Answer in the text | Agent answered right | Tokens per question |
| FATSEARCH | 1,384 | yes | $0.0028 | 35/38 | 26/38 | 2.6k |
| Tavily | 97,504 | yes | $0.20 | 19/38 | — | — |
| Firecrawl | 112,517 | yes | $0.23 | 24/38 | 24/38 | 2.8k |
| Jina Reader | 94,415 | yes | $0.19 | 8/38 | — | — |
| Oxylabs | 102,609 | yes | $0.21 | — | — | — |
| Bright Data | 103,625 | yes | $0.21 | — | — | — |
One page: Wikipedia “Rust (programming language)”, default settings, one run each. Tokens = Anthropic’s own counter; fats = outline + one filter + one section. Model bill = tokens × $2 per million input tokens (Claude Sonnet 5.5, ); reader fees not included.
Hard pages: Social, news, shops, travel, classifieds, search: pages a built-in fetch can’t read. FATSEARCH 0.1.0, 2026-10-16, one run each; Firecrawl’s copy was cut to fit the agent run. “—” = not in that run.
Why people look for Tavily alternatives
Tavily is a search-first API: your agent searches the web and extracts page content through one service. Nebius announced an agreement to acquire Tavily, to add agentic search to its AI cloud; the release says Tavily keeps its brand and its customers.
The main trade-off is token volume. Tavily’s extract hands your agent a full Markdown copy of the page: 97,504 tokens for one Wikipedia article, costing $0.20 in model input at $2/M. FATSEARCH returned an outline first, then one filter and the one section the agent needed, totalling 1,384 tokens ($0.0028). On the 38 hard pages, Tavily had the answer in the text for 19/38; FATSEARCH for 35/38. Method and raw files: benchmarks.
What sets each alternative apart
Every reader’s section below shows what it returned, its price (with source), and when it is the better pick. The comparison hub has the full table. Head-to-heads: Firecrawl vs Tavily and Firecrawl vs Jina Reader.
Open-source alternatives
If you want search without a vendor key, two open-source MCP servers do it: SearXNG (a metasearch engine you host, with mcp-searxng) and open-webSearch (scrapes public engines from one npx line). Reading a page is where they differ from FATSEARCH: SearXNG’s default read put 117,088 tokens in context, open-webSearch’s 11,609. Both, with the other self-run tools: open source web search MCP.
Reader by reader
FATSEARCH
Local CLI + MCP server, your own provider key. Measured: outline, then one filter, then one section (plain HTTP, $0).
1,384 tokens across three reads. First lines:
= j11.u46 Rust (programming language) - Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · 57 sections · 6 photos · 2 videos · 40.9ktok · pl… u46#0 info | author Contributors to Wikimedia projects · published 2010-10-30T22:30:54Z · modified 2026-10-15T20:56:59Z m1 photo 250x167 png | A bright orange crab icon → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Rustacean-or… m2 photo 250x314 png | (no alt) → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Rust_standard_libraries.svg/5… m3 photo 250x193 png | (no alt) → https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Cargo_clippy_hello_world_exam… … +10 media → fats u46 media u46#1 (top) (9) | Jump to content u46#9 Syntax and features (9.2k, 27 sub) | [edit [l175] ] Main article: Rust syntax [l176] Rust's syntax [l177] is simil…
Price: $0.001–0.0065 per hard page, $0 plain pages (github.com, checked )
Tavily
Hosted search + extract API, MCP server. Measured: /extract, basic depth.
97,504 tokens, 70× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
[Jump to content](#bodyContent) [   ## Contents * [1 History](#History) + [1.1 2006–2009: Early years](#2006–2009:_Early_years) + [1.2 2009–2012: Mozilla sponsorship](#2009–2012:_Mozilla_sponsorship) + [1.3 2012–2015: Evolution](#2012–2015:_Evolution)
Price: Free: 1,000 API credits a month. Pay as you go: $0.008 a credit. A basic extract costs 1 credit per 5 successful URLs (advanced: 2). (tavily.com, docs.tavily.com, checked )
When it’s better: Search is the main job. Tavily is a search API for agents and can return page text with the results in one call. FATSEARCH searches too, but hands back result ids your agent opens one by one.
Firecrawl
Hosted scrape, crawl + search API (AGPL core), MCP server. Measured: v2 /scrape, markdown, default settings.
112,517 tokens, 81× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
[Jump to content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)#bodyContent) [ | - [Multi-paradigm](https://en…
Price: Free: 1,000 credits a month (one scraped page = one credit). Hobby: $16 a month billed yearly ($19 monthly) for 5,000 credits. Standard: $83 a month billed yearly for 100,000. (firecrawl.dev, checked )
When it’s better: You want a whole site, not one page. Firecrawl crawls a site in one request, maps its URLs, batch-scrapes many pages and returns structured JSON or screenshots. It can also search, click through a page, and turn PDFs and DOCX into Markdown. Its core is open source under the AGPL and can be self-hosted, though some features are Cloud-only. FATSEARCH has no crawler and no DOCX yet.
Jina Reader
Hosted URL-to-Markdown reader, MCP server. Measured: r.jina.ai, no key.
94,415 tokens, 68× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
Title: Rust (programming language) URL Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language) Published Time: 2010-10-30T22:30:54Z Markdown Content: | Rust | | --- | | [ | * [Multi-paradigm](https://en…
Price: Free without a key at 20 requests a minute. With a key it is billed by output tokens; a new key comes with 10M free tokens. (jina.ai, checked )
When it’s better: Zero install, no account. Put r.jina.ai/ in front of a URL and you get Markdown back. Good for a quick one-off read in a script.
Oxylabs
Hosted scraper API + proxies, MCP server. Measured: Web Scraper API /v1/scrape, markdown, no JS.
102,609 tokens, 74× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
[Jump to content](#bodyContent) Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation * [Main page](/wiki/Main_Page "Visit the main page [z]") * [Contents](/wiki/Wikipedia%3AContents "Guides to browsing Wikipedia")
Price: Web Scraper API, other sites: $1.00 per 1,000 results on the Starter plan ($30 a month). $5 of free welcome credits. (oxylabs.io, checked )
When it’s better: You need whole pages at volume, including Google and Amazon, with proxies and an unblocker under one subscription.
Bright Data
Hosted unblocker API + proxies, MCP server. Measured: Web Unlocker, markdown.
103,625 tokens, 75× what FATSEARCH used. First lines:
Rust (programming language) - Wikipedia [Jump to content](#bodyContent) Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation * [Main page](/wiki/Main_Page "Visit the main page [z]") * [Contents](/wiki/Wikipedia:Contents "Guides to browsing Wikipedia")
Price: Web Unlocker: 5,000 free requests a month, then $1.5 per 1,000 requests, pay as you go. (brightdata.com, checked )
When it’s better: You need pages that fight back, at volume. Web Unlocker handles CAPTCHAs, browser rendering and retries. You pay only for success.
Questions
Is there a free alternative to Tavily?
FATSEARCH is open source and reads plain pages for free. Search, and pages that need a provider, run on your own Oxylabs or Bright Data key: $0.001–0.0065 per hard page, $0 plain pages. Jina Reader: Free without a key at 20 requests a minute. With a key it is billed by output tokens; a new key comes with 10M free tokens. Tavily itself has a free tier: Free: 1,000 API credits a month. Pay as you go: $0.008 a credit. A basic extract costs 1 credit per 5 successful URLs (advanced: 2).
Is Tavily better than Firecrawl?
They lean different ways. On 38 hard pages, Firecrawl found the answer 24/38, Tavily 19/38. Both search, extract and crawl; Tavily is built around search, Firecrawl around scraping. Our Firecrawl vs Tavily page has the head-to-head.
Is Tavily a good search engine?
It's a search API for agents, not a search engine for people: it returns ranked results as JSON, with page text if you ask. We haven't measured its search quality. We tested its extract endpoint, which had the answer for 19/38 hard pages.
Try FATSEARCH on your own pages
Free and open source. Bring any one key, or none.
curl -fsSL https://fatsearch.com/install.sh | shnpm i -g fatsearchbrew install fatsearch/tap/fatsearchcargo install --locked fatsearchor let your agent do it
Read and follow fatsearch.com/agent-setup/SKILL.md