# Brave Search API + MCP vs Tavily API + MCP

> Tavily API + MCP has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Brave Search API + MCP's 68.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is reliability, 35 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.md (~1,750 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brave-search-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Tavily API + MCP has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Brave Search API + MCP's 68.1 (B). Both do web search. The largest gap is reliability, 35 points.

- Brave Search API + MCP: grade B, 68.1/100, rank #132 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/brave-search-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/brave-search-mcp.json
- Tavily API + MCP: grade BB, 77.2/100, rank #20 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tavily-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tavily-mcp.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Brave Search API + MCP for security & auth (+6), transparency & trust (+17).

Pick Tavily API + MCP for reliability (+35), schema & documentation (+17), agent ergonomics (+9), payments & pricing (+5).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Brave Search API + MCP | Tavily API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 90 | Tavily API + MCP +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 89 | Tavily API + MCP +17 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 72 | 81 | Tavily API + MCP +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 52 | Brave Search API + MCP +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 70 | 75 | Tavily API + MCP +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 87 | 85 | Brave Search API + MCP +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 65 | Brave Search API + MCP +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **68.1 · B** | **77.2 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Brave Search API + MCP | Tavily API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | MCP server |
| Vendor | Brave | Tavily |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search` | `https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<key>` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | payer tooling only | payer tooling only |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 8 | 6 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.brave/brave-search-mcp-server` | `io.github.tavily-ai/tavily-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Popularity | 1.4k stars, 22k npm/wk | 2.4k stars, 452k npm/wk, 1.6M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.6/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**Brave Search API + MCP.** x402 proxy sells web, LLM Context, news, video, image and local search at $0.005 a call, and a failed search isn't charged. The status page marks the Search API "not monitored" and shows no incident history.

**Tavily API + MCP.** Keyless search and extract, plus a free 1,000 credits a month with no card. x402 covers advanced search only, not extract, map, crawl or research.

## Before you call either

### Brave Search API + MCP

1. Call /res/v1/llm/context when you need page text rather than links. It saves a separate fetch
2. Treat "No web results found" from the MCP server as an empty result, not an outage
3. On 429, wait for `X-RateLimit-Reset` seconds. There's no `Retry-After` header
4. Skip `brave_summarizer`. The Summarizer is deprecated and the x402 proxy doesn't sell it
5. Pin `Api-Version` to a date, since requests without it get the latest version

### Tavily API + MCP

1. Try `X-Tavily-Access-Mode: keyless` first for search and extract, then switch to a key or x402 when the limit hits
2. Send the key in `Authorization: Bearer`, not `?tavilyApiKey=` in the MCP URL
3. On 429, wait for `Retry-After`. A 432 or 433 means a spend limit, and retrying won't help
4. Run /map before /crawl to bound the crawl, since crawl is billed as map plus extract
5. Research is async and runs 4 to 250 credits. Create the task, then poll /research/{request_id}

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