Three APIs are covered here — Tavily, Exa, and Brave Search API — each verified against its official pricing page on three independent hosts. Prices are a snapshot checked on 2026-09-25 and may change.
All three are explicitly built for AI agents. Tavily is the easiest to start: 1,000 free API credits per month with no card, then pay-as-you-go at $0.008 per credit. Exa gives $20 sign-up credit plus $10 every month, with standard Search at $7 per 1,000 requests and a range of deeper endpoints above that. Brave Search API lists the lowest per-request price of the three at $5 per 1,000 requests (Answers at $4 per 1,000 plus token fees), and applies $5 in free credits monthly. Each pricing page is linked in the table below.
| API | Why it fits AI agents | Pricing snapshot | Pricing page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tavily | The API is designed to power AI Agents, with plans offering API credits, rate limits, and custom API calls scaled for agent usage. | Free plan: 1,000 API credits/month at no cost, no credit card required (also free for students); Pay As You Go: $0.008 per credit; Project plan: paid monthly with 4,000 API credits/month and higher rate limits; Enterprise: custom pricing with custom API calls, rate limits, and enterprise-grade support, SLAs, security, and privacy. | tavily.com/pricing source: tavily.com |
| Exa | Exa provides web search tool calls for agents, including low-latency search options for latency-sensitive agent loops and deep research agent workflows. | Free tier: $20 credits on sign-up plus $10 credits every month with no payment method required; Developer plan is pay-as-you-go usage-based billing; more tiers on the pricing page. | exa.ai/pricing source: exa.ai |
| Brave Search API | It powers AI agents and chatbots with real-time web search data, LLM-optimized context, and grounded answers to reduce hallucinations. | Search plan: $5 per 1,000 requests; Answers plan: $4 per 1,000 requests plus $5 per million input/output tokens; both include $5 in free credits every month, automatically applied to your account. | api-dashboard.search.brave.com source: brave.com |
Data: 3 web search APIs for AI agents, one row each, pulled from official pages on 3 independent hosts and checked on 2026-09-25. Prices are list prices as published (per-request or per-credit); long enterprise and endpoint detail is shortened for space. No URL backs more than one of the 3 rows.