Brave Search vs Tavily: web search API comparison
Brave Search and Tavily measured on the same three jobs: factual lookup, hard retrieval for coding agents, and multi-hop company search. Winner per task is in the table below.
Brave Search or Tavily — winner per task
Best measured endpoint per vendor on each task. Modes stay separate rows in the tables below.
| Task | Brave Search | Tavily | Measured winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Factual lookup (accuracy) | 94.0% | 93.0% | Brave Search |
| Hard retrieval (task completion, search-only) | 38.0% | 51.0% | Tavily |
| Multi-hop (F1, search-only) | 28.0% | 41.1% | Tavily |
Brave Search and Tavily on company-news lookup
One query, one verifiable fact. 300 questions, max 10 results. Full factual lookup board →
| Axis | Brave Search | Tavily | Measured winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy (extracted-answer) | 94.0% | 93.0% | Brave Search |
| Answer recall (AR@5) | 94.7% | 92.7% | Brave Search |
| Speed (mean latency) | 601ms | 1.88s | Brave Search |
| Cost per 1,000 queries (list price) | $5.00 | $8.00 | Brave Search |
| Rank | Vendor | Endpoint & configuration | $ / 1k correct | Accuracy | AR@1 | AR@5 | Latency | Snippet tokens | Total $ | Official docs | Cost per 1,000 queries |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brave Searchweb searchBrave LLM context | POST /res/v1/llm/contextcount=10 | $5.32 | 94.0% | 81.0% | 94.7% | 601ms | 2,064 | $1.50 | Official docs | $5 / 1kSearch plan · LLM Context |
| 2 | Brave Searchweb search | GET /res/v1/web/searchcount=10 · result_filter=web | $5.36 | 93.3% | 79.3% | 91.7% | 630ms | 817 | $1.50 | Official docs | $5 / 1k |
| 3 | Tavilyweb searchbasic | POST /searchsearch_depth=basic | $9.13 | 87.7% | 82.0% | 87.7% | 1.88s | 1,639 | $2.40 | Official docs | $8 / 1k1 credit · $0.008 PAYG |
| 4 | Tavilyweb searchadvanced | POST /searchsearch_depth=advanced | $17.20 | 93.0% | 65.0% | 92.7% | 4.29s | 2,210 | $4.80 | Official docs | $16 / 1k2 credits · $0.008 PAYG |
$ / 1k correct is $ / 1k queries divided by extracted-answer accuracy. Ranked by $ / 1k correct. Cost per 1,000 queries is the published PAYG list price, linked to the vendor pricing page. Not promotional packs or volume discounts. TinyFish Search is free with a 30 requests/min cap — $0 is not unlimited throughput.
Brave Search and Tavily on coding-agent docs
Grounded task completion on 100 documentation tickets. A pass needs a # source: URL from that run. Full coding-agent board →
Tavily leads at 51.0%. Median task time: Brave Search 20s vs Tavily 26s.
| Rank | Vendor | Endpoint & configuration | Task completion | Median task time | Median task cost | Avg search time | Median task tokens | API list price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tavily advanced | POST /search search_depth=advancedPOST /extract extract_depth=advanced | 60.0 ± 2.0 | 46s | $0.153$0.085 search+fetch$0.069 token cost | 3.41s | 26,269 | $0.016 / search$0.0032 / fetch |
| 2 | Tavily basic | POST /search search_depth=basicPOST /extract extract_depth=basic | 59.0 ± 1.7 | 32s | $0.113$0.043 search+fetch$0.070 token cost | 1.50s | 27,405 | $0.008 / search$0.0016 / fetch |
| Rank | Vendor | Endpoint & configuration | Task completion | Median task time | Median task cost | Avg search time | Median task tokens | API list price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brave | POST /res/v1/llm/context | 38.0 ± 2.6 | 20s | $0.082$0.025 search$0.057 token cost | 523ms | 14,103 | $0.005 / search |
| 2 | Tavily basic | POST /search search_depth=basic | 51.0 ± 5.3 | 26s | $0.097$0.040 search$0.057 token cost | 1.72s | 16,299 | $0.008 / search |
Brave Search and Tavily on multi-turn company search
45 questions, each with three or four constraints. Scored on precision, recall, F1, and exact-set. Full multi-turn board →
Tavily leads F1 at 41.1%. Median agent time: Brave Search 43.52s vs Tavily 63.04s. Median task cost: Brave Search $0.268 vs Tavily $0.615.
| Provider | Endpoint & configuration | F1 | Precision | Recall | Exact set | Median time | Mean turns | Median task cost | API list price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brave Search | GET /res/v1/web/searchbrave | 28.0 ± 1.7 | 66.9 ± 8.5 | 19.3 ± 0.5 | 0.7 ± 1.3 | 43.5 s | 8.0 | $0.268$0.070 search$0.200 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Tavily advanced | POST /search search_depth=advancedtavily-advanced | 41.1 ± 2.3 | 83.7 ± 4.2 | 29.8 ± 1.7 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 92.2 s | 7.4 | $1.029$0.224 search$0.808 token cost | $0.016 / search |
| Tavily basic | POST /search search_depth=basictavily-basic | 36.5 ± 3.2 | 82.5 ± 1.9 | 25.7 ± 2.7 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 63.0 s | 7.7 | $0.615$0.112 search$0.504 token cost | $0.008 / search |
F1, precision, recall, and exact-set accuracy are percentages reported as mean ± sample SD across three independent runs; each run aggregates all 45 questions. SD is measured in percentage points. Median time is the median end-to-end time across all runs for each vendor. Median task cost is the median of LLM $ plus search API $ per agent run. API list price is the PAYG unit rate of the search endpoint the harness calls.
| Provider | Endpoint & configuration | F1 | Precision | Recall | Exact set | Median time | Mean turns | Median task cost | API list price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brave Search | GET /res/v1/web/searchbrave | 29.4 ± 1.6 | 73.5 ± 5.8 | 20.4 ± 0.9 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 45.1 s | 8.0 | $0.285$0.060 search+fetch$0.222 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Tavily advanced | POST /search search_depth=advancedtavily-advanced | 41.0 ± 1.3 | 89.4 ± 6.0 | 29.1 ± 0.7 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 92.6 s | 7.3 | $0.898$0.195 search+fetch$0.685 token cost | $0.016 / search$0.0032 / fetch |
| Tavily basic | POST /search search_depth=basictavily-basic | 38.1 ± 1.4 | 81.2 ± 5.9 | 27.8 ± 0.7 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 62.0 s | 7.8 | $0.610$0.112 search+fetch$0.507 token cost | $0.008 / search$0.0032 / fetch |
F1, precision, recall, and exact-set accuracy are percentages reported as mean ± sample SD across three independent runs; each run aggregates all 45 questions. SD is measured in percentage points. Median time is the median end-to-end time across all runs for each vendor. Median task cost is the median of LLM $ plus search/fetch API $ per agent run. API list price is the PAYG unit rate of the search (and fetch) endpoint the harness calls.
Brave Search vs Tavily — common questions
Brave Search vs Tavily: which web search API is better?
Factual lookup: Brave Search leads accuracy (Brave Search 94.0% vs Tavily 93.0%). Hard retrieval: Tavily leads task completion (Brave Search 38.0% vs Tavily 51.0%). Multi-hop: Tavily leads F1 (Brave Search 28.0% vs Tavily 41.1%).
Is Brave Search or Tavily cheaper?
On factual lookup list price: Brave Search $5.00 per 1,000 queries vs Tavily $8.00 — Brave Search is cheaper. Coding token efficiency is median task tokens; multi-hop cheapest is cost per agent run. Free tiers and volume discounts excluded.