# Crawl4AI vs Tavily

Both give AI agents web search and page content. Tavily charges 1 or 2 credits a search, at $0.005 to $0.008 a credit. Crawl4AI charges 1 credit ($0.001) a search, adds Google's own results page, full pages at any effort level and 93 recipes, and comes from the team that wrote the open-source crawler.
Facts last checked 12 Nov 2026

Crawl4AI vs Tavily: the short answer
A Crawl4AI search costs 1 credit ($1.00 per 1,000); a Tavily search costs $5.00 to $8.00 per 1,000, and an advanced search $10.00 to $16.00. Crawl4AI pages cost $0.10 per 1,000 plain and $0.50 with a real browser, and a failed call costs nothing; Tavily Extract costs $1.00 to $3.20 per 1,000 URLs. Crawl4AI also returns Google's own results page with ads and maps, gets past bot checks on hard sites and runs 93 recipes for named sites; Tavily's own blog sends protected sites to other vendors. Crawl4AI runs in the EU, Singapore and the US and refunds within 14 days; Tavily's EU endpoint is not generally available and its fees are non-refundable. Agents set Crawl4AI up from one message and run their own budget with 17 MCP tools.

## Which one fits

Different tools fit different jobs. Here is when each one is the better choice.

### Choose Tavily if

- You want a research agent that searches many sources and writes a cited report in one call: Tavily Research, mini or pro.
- You want page text inside each search result in one call, at the same 1 credit as a basic search.
- You want a filter in front of results that blocks prompt injection and PII leaks.
- You build in n8n, Zapier or Make and want a ready Tavily step.

### Choose Crawl4AI if

- You build with AI agents: one message sets Crawl4AI up in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI or OpenCode, and 17 MCP tools let the agent search, read pages, run recipes, price a call first and manage its budget.
- You need Google's own results page as data, with ads, maps and the AI overview, for 1 credit. Tavily says it returns what the pages say, not what Google shows.
- You read full pages after you search: $0.10 per 1,000 plain pages, and hard sites with bot checks on the same key. Tavily's blog sends those to Bright Data or Scrapfly.
- You need named sites as rows: 93 recipes, a LinkedIn profile for 1 credit. Tavily's blog points to Apify for that.
- You want money that stays yours: nothing for a failed call, 14-day refunds and extra credits that never expire.
- You need data in the EU, Singapore or the US, a team with an audit log from Builder, or a copy inside your network on the same Apache 2.0 engine.

For enterprise teams

## The controls your security team asks for

Crawl4AI's Enterprise plan next to Tavily's. Tavily's side restates its own pages; click a line to see the quote.

| Control | Crawl4AI Enterprise | Tavily Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| SSO (SAML, OIDC) | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| SCIM user sync | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| Teams, roles and audit log | **✓ From Builder ($99), no seat limit** | More workspaces: Enterprise; audit log not published |
| Zero data retention | **✓ Yes** | On request |
| IP allowlist and key limits | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| Static exit IPs | **✓ Yes** | Not published |
| Where data is processed | EU, Singapore or US, your choice | US; EU endpoint "not generally available" |
| Deployment | Cloud, dedicated fleet, inside your network, managed pipeline; one engine | Managed API only; self-host not published |
| DPA and invoice billing | **✓ Every Enterprise plan** | DPA in their security packet |
| Refunds | 14 days, if no credits were used | None: "non-refundable" |
| Status page | Hourly uptime per service, public | 3 components, one aggregate bar |
| Uptime and response SLA | Typical: 99.9% a month; service down: first answer within 1 hour, 24/7; part broken: 4 business hours; a question: 1 business day; 5% of the month's fee back if missed, 10% under 99% | Enterprise only; targets not published |
| Support | A named engineer | Slack channel, account manager, AI engineer |
| Security assurance | Controls monitored every day in Drata, with the evidence kept; dependencies watched for known vulnerabilities; SOC 2 audit by Sensiba under way, report target January 2027. Security pack on request: policies, audit status, DPA, questionnaire answers. | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 |

## Same job, two calls

6 jobs an agent does every day. The call on each side, and the price of 1,000 of them at list. The label marks the side that costs less for that job.
**01 · A web search**one query
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

```
curl "https://api.crawl4ai.com/search?q=best+crm" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"
```

1 credit a search. $0.79 per 1,000 on Builder.

**Tavily $5.00–$8.00/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.tavily.com/search \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"query":"best crm"}'
```

1 credit a basic search, 2 for advanced ($10.00–$16.00). With auto_parameters, Tavily may switch to advanced.

**02 · Google results with ads and maps**Google's own results page
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

```
curl "https://api.crawl4ai.com/serp?q=best+crm&country=us" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"
```

1 credit per Google page: organic ranks, ads, local pack and AI overview.

**Tavily Not offered/ 1,000

```
# No Tavily endpoint returns
# Google's results page.
```

By Tavily's own page: "SerpApi returns what Google shows".

**03 · A query plus the top pages' text**5 results with their full text
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.50/ 1,000

```
curl "https://api.crawl4ai.com/search?q=latest+ai+news" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape/batch \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"urls":["<url1>","…","<url5>"],"format":"md"}'
```

/search 1 credit, then 5 plain pages at 0.1 credit each. $3.50 if all 5 need a real browser.

**Tavily $5.00–$8.00/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.tavily.com/search \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"query":"latest ai news",
       "max_results":5,
       "include_raw_content":"markdown"}'
```

One call, 1 credit. Page text comes from cached copies by default.

**04 · News on a topic**recent stories
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

```
curl "https://api.crawl4ai.com/search?q=nvidia+earnings&rich=1" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"
```

1 credit. rich=1 adds news, an entity card and videos; /serp adds Google's top stories.

**Tavily $5.00–$8.00/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.tavily.com/search \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"query":"nvidia earnings",
       "topic":"news"}'
```

The news topic is a search: 1 credit, 2 for advanced.

**05 · One page to Markdown**a plain page
**Crawl4AI costs less$0.10/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com","format":"md"}'
```

0.1 credit; a page that needs a real browser 0.5. A failed call costs nothing.

**Tavily $1.00–$1.60/ 1,000

```
curl -X POST https://api.tavily.com/extract \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"urls":["https://example.com"]}'
```

1 credit per 5 URLs, 2 for advanced ($2.00–$3.20). A failed URL is free on both.

**06 · A LinkedIn profile as rows**name, title, company, history
**Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

```
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/recipes/linkedin-profile \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"profile":"satyanadella"}'
```

A recipe: 2 units × 0.5 credit. The same named columns every time; one of 93.

**Tavily Not offered/ 1,000

```
# No Tavily endpoint returns
# a profile as fixed columns.
```

No named-site scrapers. Tavily's blog sends this job to Apify.

## Crawl4AI vs Tavily, side by side

Each Tavily cell restates Tavily's own pages, read on 12 Nov 2026. Click it to see the quote and the page. "Not published" means those pages say nothing about it, not that it is missing.

|  | Crawl4AI Cloud | Tavily |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing |  |  |
| How you pay | Credits in every plan: Free, Starter $10, Builder $99, Scale $499 | Credits at $0.005 to $0.008: Project $30 to Growth $500 |
| 1,000 searches | $1.00, Google results page included (/serp) | $5.00 to $8.00 basic; $10.00 to $16.00 advanced |
| 1,000 plain / browser / hard pages | $0.10 / $0.50 / $2.00 | Extract: $1.00–$1.60 basic, $2.00–$3.20 advanced; hard sites not published |
| Failed calls | Free, blocked pages included | Failed extract free; search not published |
| A page already cached | Half price | Cached copies by default |
| Unused credits | Extra credits never expire | Reset on the 1st of each month |
| Refunds | 14 days, if no credits were used | None |
| What you get back |  |  |
| Formats | Markdown, HTML, links, media, metadata, tables; engine and cache on every answer | Markdown or plain text |
| Google results as data | /serp: organic ranks, ads, local pack, AI overview | Not offered |
| Whole site | /site deep crawl (500 pages a call); /scan up to 50,000 URLs | /crawl and /map; a crawl costs map + extract |
| Named sites | 93 recipes; a LinkedIn profile 1 credit | No catalog; their blog points to Apify |
| JSON by your schema | /extract on any page; median 1.87 credits | Research only: 4 to 250 credits a call |
| Documents | PDF, Word and Excel; a PDF costs one page | Not published |
| Change monitoring | Watch (beta) | An agent skill that writes local files |
| Hard sites |  |  |
| Bot checks and CAPTCHA pages | Gets past them on hard sites; a page we cannot get costs nothing | Not published; their blog sends them to other vendors |
| Proxies | standard, or extra with rented residential addresses (4x); country choice | Search country boost only |
| Agents |  |  |
| MCP | Hosted, no install; key or OAuth; 17 tools | Remote and local; 5 tools |
| Setup | One message sets it up in 7 coding agents | A setup prompt for any assistant |
| Agent budget | Estimate, balance, spend cap and top-up as tools; cost on every answer | A usage endpoint, 10 calls per 10 minutes |
| Open source |  |  |
| License | Apache 2.0, 87,236 GitHub stars | API closed; SDKs and MCP server MIT |
| Self-host | The same engine as the Cloud | Not published |

Crawl4AI's prices come from its live price list, GET /v1/prices. Prices change; check each product's own pricing page before you decide.

The trade-off

## What each one does better

### Where Tavily does best

1. **Research reports.** A research agent that reads many sources and writes a cited answer, mini or pro.
2. **Page text in the search call.** Search results can carry the page text for the same credit.
3. **A safety filter.** Results pass a filter for prompt injection, PII and bad sources.
4. **No-code connectors.** Ready steps in n8n, Zapier and Make.

### Where Crawl4AI is the better choice

1. **Pay for the work, not the attempt.** 1 credit a search, 0.1 credit a plain page, nothing for a failed or blocked call.
2. **More of the web on one key.** Google's own results page, hard sites with bot checks, and 93 recipes for named sites such as LinkedIn.
3. **Made for agents.** One message sets it up; 17 MCP tools cover search, pages, recipes, jobs, cost estimates and the budget.
4. **Built for enterprise.** Three regions, teams and an audit log from Builder, SSO and SCIM, and 14-day refunds.

Switch in one prompt

## Move your Tavily calls in minutes

Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor or Codex in your project. It finds your Tavily calls and moves them to Crawl4AI, one endpoint at a time, and keeps both working until you check the results.
Move this project's Tavily calls to Crawl4AI Cloud. Read https://crawl4ai.com/llms.txt first. 1. Find every call to the Tavily API or SDK. 2. Map each one: /search → GET /search · /search + include_raw_content → GET /search + POST /scrape/batch · /search topic: news → GET /search?rich=1 · /serp · /extract → POST /scrape · /scrape/batch · /crawl → POST /site · /map → POST /scan · /research + output_schema → POST /extract · tavily-monitor skill → Watch. 3. Read the key from CRAWL4AI_API_KEY (YOUR_CRAWL4AI_API_KEY). 4. Keep the old path behind a flag; compare 20 real URLs on both; show me the diff.

| Tavily |  | Crawl4AI |
|---|---|---|
| /search | → | GET /search |
| /search + include_raw_content | → | GET /search + POST /scrape/batch |
| /search topic: news | → | GET /search?rich=1 · /serp |
| /extract | → | POST /scrape · /scrape/batch |
| /crawl | → | POST /site |
| /map | → | POST /scan |
| /research + output_schema | → | POST /extract |
| tavily-monitor skill | → | Watch |

From both products' docs, 12 Nov 2026.

## Using both

Not either-or. Both speak MCP, so one agent can hold both. A team could keep Tavily for cited research reports and use Crawl4AI for search at $1.00 per 1,000, Google results, full pages from hard sites, recipes and EU data.

## Frequently asked questions
How much does Tavily cost?

A basic Tavily search costs 1 credit and an advanced search 2. Plans are Project $30 (4,000 credits), Bootstrap $100 (15,000), Startup $220 (38,000) and Growth $500 (100,000) a month, and pay as you go is $0.008 a credit, so 1,000 searches cost $5.00 to $16.00. Extract costs 1 credit per 5 URLs, $1.00 to $1.60 per 1,000 pages. Crawl4AI charges $1.00 per 1,000 searches and $0.10 per 1,000 plain pages.
Does Tavily charge for failed requests?

Tavily says "You never get charged if a URL extraction fails", and the same for a failed map; for search it publishes nothing. Crawl4AI charges nothing for a failed call, a blocked page included, and every answer says which effort level the page needed.
Does Tavily give refunds?

Tavily's terms say "all Fees and other amounts paid are non-refundable and non-cancelable". On Crawl4AI, a first plan payment or an extra-credit purchase is refundable within 14 days if none of its credits were used.
Does Tavily have EU data residency?

Tavily's EU endpoint is for selected customer evaluations and "is not generally available"; even there, account and billing data stay in the US. Crawl4AI runs in the EU, Singapore and the US, and keeps account, usage and billing data in the EU.
Does Tavily return Google search results?

No, by its own words: "SerpApi returns what Google shows. Tavily returns what the pages actually say". Crawl4AI /serp returns Google's own results page as data, with ads, maps and the AI overview, for 1 credit a page.
Can Tavily scrape sites with bot checks?

Tavily publishes no proxy or anti-bot feature, and its own blog says "Bright Data and Scrapfly are stronger fits" for those pages. Crawl4AI gets past bot checks and CAPTCHA pages on hard sites, and a page it cannot get costs nothing.
Is Crawl4AI only a self-hosted crawler?

No. A blog post on Tavily's site recommends "Crawl4AI when you want a self-hosted open-source crawler" and says its hosted options "should be verified"; that is out of date. Crawl4AI Cloud is a managed API in three regions with a public price list (Free, Starter $10, Builder $99, Scale $499), search, Google results, real browsers and proxies included, and a hosted MCP server. The open-source engine has 87,236 GitHub stars (GitHub, 2026-11-12).

Sources and method

1. [Tavily credits and pricing ↗](https://docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits)
2. [Tavily pricing page ↗](https://www.tavily.com/pricing)
3. [Tavily search API reference ↗](https://docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-reference/endpoint/search)
4. [Tavily EU endpoint ↗](https://www.tavily.com/eu)
5. [Tavily terms ↗](https://www.tavily.com/terms)
6. [Tavily enterprise ↗](https://www.tavily.com/enterprise)
7. [Tavily vs SerpApi page ↗](https://tavily.com/competitors/serp)
8. [Tavily blog: Firecrawl alternatives (names Crawl4AI) ↗](https://tavily.com/blog/7-best-firecrawl-alternatives-for-ai-agents-in-2026)
9. [Crawl4AI prices ↗](https://crawl4ai.com/v1/prices)
10. [Crawl4AI legal ↗](https://crawl4ai.com/legal/)

We read these pages on 12 Nov 2026. Crawl4AI's facts come from its live price list, docs and terms. Something wrong or out of date? Write to hello@crawl4ai.com and we fix it.