Tavily alternatives: 8 web search APIs for LLM agents

People look for Tavily alternatives when the search step of an agent costs too much, returns the wrong shape, or misses filters they need. Tavily takes a query and returns results with a title, URL, content and a relevance score, plus an answer when you ask for one. Several other web search APIs do the same job with different output, filters and billing.

This post ranks eight of them from the looot catalog for one job: a query goes in, ranked results an LLM can read come out. You get a comparison table with live prices, how we ranked, one section per provider with its real limits, a decision guide, a prompt and a FAQ. Tavily itself is the baseline row in the price table, not a ranked entry.

Tavily alternatives: the short answer

Each bullet names a different need.

• Limadata, best for plain Google results: title, URL and snippet, nothing else.
• Jina, best for results in search-engine order already formatted for an LLM.
• Keenable, best for filtering results by publish date or by when the page was indexed.
• You.com, best for up to 100 results in one call, with domain boosting and live market data.
• Brave, best for results from an independent index with news, video and FAQ blocks attached.
• Linkup, best for picking between ranked results, a sourced answer or structured output in one endpoint.
• Exa, best for neural search by meaning, with page text added on request.
• Context.dev, best for search plus each result as markdown in the same call.

Prices are read from the catalog when the page loads. One row per provider, Tavily first as the reference.

How we ranked these

We read the public looot catalog on 2026-11-04 and took every endpoint tagged web_search. Entries 1 to 7 bill per call, and we ordered them by that price, cheapest first. Where two providers had the same price per call, the one with more related web capabilities in the catalog goes first, then alphabetical order.

Context.dev bills per result, so its cost per search moves with numResults. We did not guess a result count to turn that into a per-call price. We placed it after the per-call providers and marked it in the table. Multiply its row by the number of results you ask for.

We did not run these endpoints for this post. The catalog publishes no measured success rate or speed for them, so we rank on neither. Firecrawl and ScrapeGraphAI also search, but they bill per result and fetch pages, which is a scraping job more than a search one. Parallel's catalog description points only to its docs, so we could not say what it returns. Octen and Olostep return ranked results too and appear on the live web search API ranking. We capped this post at eight. TinyFish lists its search at a price of zero, and nothing in its description says the search is free, so we could not tell a free tier from a missing price and left it out.

1. Limadata, best for plain Google results

The endpoint limadata-api-search-web takes a query and returns Google web results with a title, URL and snippet. The only other parameter is page, which pages the results. The catalog says each search costs a fixed credit amount per call.

Best for

• Checking which pages Google ranks for a list of queries.
• An agent that reads snippets and decides which page to open next.

Limits

• No date, domain, country or language filter in the described parameters.
• Snippets only. Page text is a second call to limadata-api-research-extract.

Does not fit an agent that wants page content in the search response.

2. Jina, best for LLM-ready results in engine order

The endpoint jina-search takes q and returns results in search-engine order, formatted for LLMs. num, page, gl, hl and location refine it. Jina also has a reader endpoint that turns one URL into markdown, and a rerank endpoint.

Best for

• Dropping results straight into a prompt without reshaping them.
• Searching from a set location with the location parameter.

Limits

• The description names no response fields. Read one response before you parse it in code.
• No date filter in the described parameters.

Does not fit a job that filters by publish date.

3. Keenable, best for date filters

The endpoint keenable-search returns ranked results with title, url, description, snippet and published_at. You can filter by site, by published_after and published_before, or by acquired_after and acquired_before, in dates or relative values like 7d. mode pro retrieves deeper and realtime is faster. max_results runs from 1 to 50.

Best for

• Finding only pages published in the last week on a topic.
• Restricting a search to one site.

Limits

• Snippets, not page text. keenable-fetch reads a page, as a separate call.
• No country or language parameter in the described inputs.

Does not fit a search that must run in a specific country.

4. You.com, best for big result sets and live data

The endpoint youcom-search returns ranked web and news results with title, url, description and snippets. count goes up to 100, offset 0 to 9 pages through results, and freshness, country, language and domain include, exclude or boost refine it. knowledge=core adds live stock, crypto, weather and sports data.

Best for

• Pulling up to 100 results for one query to rerank yourself.
• Boosting a list of trusted domains without excluding the rest.

Limits

• The catalog says full-page extraction is not offered here. Page text needs You.com / Page contents, a second call.

Does not fit an agent that expects page text from the search call.

5. Brave, best for an independent index

The endpoint brave-search-res-web-search returns web results from Brave's own index, with optional news, videos, FAQ, discussions and infobox blocks. country, search_lang, freshness, count and result_filter refine it. The catalog says it is charged per request.

Best for

• Getting results from an index Brave runs itself.
• One call that returns web results and discussion threads together.

Limits

• No page text in the described output.
• Brave's news, image and video searches are separate endpoints, each billed on its own.

Does not fit a RAG step that needs full page content.

6. Linkup, best for choosing the output shape

The endpoint linkup-search takes q and returns ranked results with name, url and content, a sourced answer, or structured output, picked by outputType. depth is fast, standard or deep. includeDomains, excludeDomains, fromDate and toDate filter it.

Best for

• Switching between raw results and a sourced answer without changing provider.
• Searching a fixed list of domains between two dates.

Limits

• The response shape changes with outputType, so your parser must match the format you ask for.
• No country or language parameter in the described inputs.

Does not fit a search that must target one country.

7. Exa, best for search by meaning

The endpoint exa-search runs neural or keyword search. type picks auto, fast, deep and others, and numResults, category, domains and dates refine it. contents adds page text. It returns ranked results with title, URL, date and highlights.

Best for

• Queries phrased as a description, such as "startups building payment APIs for agents".
• Getting highlights and page text in one call.

Limits

• The catalog says the charge follows Exa's reported costDollars, so the charge can differ from the listed row when you change type or add contents.
• Exa marks its find-similar endpoint as deprecated and points to search instead.

Does not fit a budget that needs the same price on every call.

8. Context.dev, best for search plus markdown

The endpoint context-dev-web-search takes a query and can scrape each result to markdown in the same call. numResults, includeDomains, excludeDomains, freshness and country refine it. It returns results with title, URL, description and markdown when asked.

Best for

• RAG steps that want the text of the top three results without a second call.
• A team that already uses Context.dev for scraping or screenshots.

Limits

• Priced per result. Ten results cost ten times one result.

Does not fit a loop that asks for many results per query.

How to choose a Tavily alternative

Start from what your agent does with the response. Snippets suit an agent that picks a page and opens it. Page text suits a RAG step that answers right away. An answer suits a chat reply.

Do you need page text or snippets?

Snippets only: Limadata, Jina, Keenable, You.com and Brave. Page text in the same call: Context.dev with markdown on, Exa with contents, and Linkup's content field. Tavily's content field sits in the second group.

Do you want an answer instead of links?

Then look at answer endpoints, not search. Exa and Linkup each have one in the catalog. exa-answer returns an answer and its citations, and outputSchema asks for structured output. linkup-responses answers with live web sources in the OpenAI Responses format.

How many searches do you run?

At volume, the billing unit matters more than the row price. A per-call provider costs the same for 5 results or 50. Context.dev costs more with every result you ask for, and Exa follows its own reported cost. Keep numResults low on per-result providers. Web search API pricing works through the numbers per 1,000 searches.

Does the search run on a timer?

A daily news sweep or a weekly rank check needs scheduled runs, not available yet. Run it by hand, or from your own scheduler that calls your agent.

Try it

To see each provider's endpoints with no sign-in, browse the public catalog. For a page about replacing Tavily outright, see Tavily alternatives on looot.

Last checked 2026-11-04 against the public catalog at https://api.looot.ai/v1/public-catalog. Author: the looot team. The blog's provider snapshot is dated 2026-10-12.