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Firecrawl vs Tavily

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Cheaper paid plan
Firecrawl — $16/mo vs $30/mo for Tavily
Free plan
Both have one
Public API
Both have one
Higher Trust score
Firecrawl — 86 vs 75 for Tavily
Best fit
Firecrawl: Developers feeding site content into RAG or agent pipelines · Tavily: Developers grounding LLM agents in fresh web results

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

FirecrawlWeb data API that searches, scrapes, crawls and interacts with sites, returning clean Markdown or JSON for LLM pipelines.TavilyWeb search, extraction and crawling API built for AI agents, returning cleaned, chunked results ready to feed a model.

Side by side

FactFirecrawlTavily
CategoryWeb Scraping & Data ExtractionWeb Scraping & Data Extraction
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$16/mo$30/mo
Public APIYesYes
Trust score86 / 10075 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIAPI
CompanySideGuide Technologies, Inc. (d/b/a Firecrawl)Tavily Inc. (Nebius Group)
Launched2024—
Last verifiedOct 2, 2026Oct 29, 2026

What our research says

Firecrawl

Firecrawl is a sensible default when an agent or RAG pipeline needs readable page content and you would rather not run proxies and headless browsers yourself. The credit model is simple to reason about for plain scrapes, but extra formats and browser sessions cost more credits than the headline page count suggests.

Pros

  • One API covers search, scrape, crawl, map and page interaction
  • Free tier renews every month and needs no card
  • Open-source core with SDKs, an MCP server and a CLI for agent tools
  • Failed scrapes that return nothing are not charged

Cons

  • JSON, question and highlight formats add 4 credits per page, so structured extraction costs several times a plain scrape
  • Pages that return an error status such as 403 or 404 still cost a credit
  • Headline plan prices are annual; paying monthly is higher

Tavily

Tavily is a sensible default for developers who need agents to search and read the live web without building scraping and ranking themselves. Teams with very high query volume, or that need full raw SERP data and control over sources, should price it against running their own search stack.

Pros

  • Search, extract, crawl, map and research behind one API key
  • Results come chunked and cleaned for model context
  • 1,000 free credits a month without a card
  • Built-in PII and prompt-injection filtering

Cons

  • Advanced requests consume more credits, which makes costs harder to predict
  • Requests stop outright when monthly credits run out on the free tier
  • Now owned by Nebius, so roadmap and terms may shift with the parent

Which one fits

Choose Firecrawl if you need

  • Developers feeding site content into RAG or agent pipelines
  • Teams that want a hosted scraper but keep the option to self-host the open-source core
  • Prototypes that fit inside the free monthly credits

Choose Tavily if you need

  • Developers grounding LLM agents in fresh web results
  • RAG pipelines that need clean extracted page content
  • Prototypes that need web access on a free tier

Firecrawl vs Tavily: the questions people ask

Is Firecrawl cheaper than Tavily?

On published entry prices, Firecrawl starts lower — $16/mo against $30/mo for Tavily. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Does Firecrawl or Tavily have a free tier?

Both: Firecrawl has a free tier, and Tavily has a free tier.

Which has a public API, Firecrawl or Tavily?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.

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