Tavily vs Kagi Search API for AI agents
Tavily is a web search API for AI agents that returns ranked results, optional page text and an optional short LLM answer. Kagi Search API is programmatic access to Kagi's premium, ad-free search results for search products and agents.
The short answer
- Tavily: Quick, agent-ready web search with snippets or page text and an optional answer in one call.
- Kagi Search API: High-quality, ad-free results with clear terms that explicitly allow feeding results to an LLM.
Side by side
| Tavily | Kagi Search API | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | The open web (general and news topics). | Kagi's search results (web, news, video, podcasts, images per its MCP). |
| Returns | JSON: ranked results with title, URL, a content snippet and relevance score; optional cleaned full page text (raw_content), images, and a short LLM-generated answer. | JSON search results; optionally full Markdown extraction of the top results in the same request. |
| Before the first call | A free account and an API key (Bearer token); no credit card for the free plan. | A Kagi account, an API key from the API dashboard, and billing set up (pay-per-use, prepaid credit or invoice). |
| Free | 1,000 API credits a month, no credit card; a basic search costs 1 credit (advanced costs 2). | Not stated on its pages |
| Paid | Pay as you go at $0.008 a credit; a basic search is 1 credit, an advanced one 2. | $12 per 1,000 requests; Extract $4 per 1,000 pages. |
| Acting on a result | Through the web page each result links to | Through the web page each result links to |
| Limits on keeping or showing results | Not stated on its pages | No storing, caching or building a database of results beyond transient caching; cached results must be deleted on termination. |
| AI in its terms | Tavily and its AI providers may use your inputs and outputs to train and improve AI models; you may not use output to build models that compete with Tavily. | Sending results to an AI model to answer your users is allowed; training or fine-tuning models, or harvesting training/evaluation datasets, is not. |
| MCP server | Official remote MCP server: https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/ (code: https://github.com/tavily-ai/tavily-mcp) | Official MCP server: https://mcp.kagi.com/mcp (code: https://github.com/kagisearch/kagimcp) |
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use Tavily?
A free account and an API key (Bearer token); no credit card for the free plan.
Is Tavily free?
1,000 API credits a month, no credit card; a basic search costs 1 credit (advanced costs 2).
What do I need before I can use Kagi Search API?
A Kagi account, an API key from the API dashboard, and billing set up (pay-per-use, prepaid credit or invoice).
Is Kagi Search API free?
Its pages listed no free use when we read them on October 15, 2026.
Sources
Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.
Tavily, read on October 15, 2026:
- tavily.com/pricing: “1,000 API credits / month”
- tavily.com/pricing: “No credit card required”
- tavily.com/pricing: “$0.008 / credit”
- docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits: “Each request costs 1 API credit.”
- docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits: “Each request costs 2 API credits.”
- tavily.com/terms: “may incorporate insights derived from your Customer Input and Outputs into their respective training datasets”
- tavily.com/terms: “use Output generated by the AI Functionality to develop models that compete with the Company”
- docs.tavily.com/documentation/mcp: “The easiest way to take advantage of Tavily MCP is by using the remote URL.”
- docs.tavily.com/documentation/mcp: “https://github.com/tavily-ai/tavily-mcp”
Kagi Search API, read on October 15, 2026:
- kagi.com/api/pricing: “$12 /1k requests”
- kagi.com/api/pricing: “$4 /1k pages”
- kagi.com/api/docs: “The Search API is a feature-rich endpoint for search products and agents.”
- kagi.com/api/docs: “You can also request full markdown extraction of the top results in a single API request.”
- help.kagi.com/kagi/api/overview.html: “The API uses a pay-per-use model”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “Store, cache, or build a database of Results beyond the transient caching needed to operate your application.”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “including sending Results to an AI model to answer your users' queries.”
- kagi.com/privacy/api: “Use Results to train or fine-tune a search index, ranking system, translation or summarization model”
- github.com/kagisearch/kagimcp: “The Official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Kagi Search & other tools.”