# Liner Search MCP vs Tavily API + MCP (slim)

> Tavily scores 77.1 (BB) to Liner Search MCP's 43.4 (E) for research search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.md (~5,250 tokens) · this version ~2,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liner-mcp-vs-tavily-mcp
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Tavily API + MCP scores 77.1 (BB) on agent readiness against Liner Search MCP's 43.4 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do research search.

- Liner Search MCP: E 43.4, rank #1252 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/liner-mcp.min.md
- Tavily API + MCP: BB 77.1, rank #36 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tavily-mcp.min.md
- Liner Search MCP, good for Agents that need cheap cited search across the web and scholarly sources, with optional deep research reports.
- Tavily API + MCP, good for An agent that needs search plus page text in one call and has no account yet. Ahead on Reliability, 90 against 50; Schema & documentation, 90 against 45; Agent ergonomics, 81 against 65; Security & auth, 52 against 35; Payments & pricing, 75 against 20; Maintenance & community, 85 against 45; Transparency & trust, 62 against 34. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card; Open source.

| Category | Liner Search MCP | Tavily API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 50 | 90 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 45 | 90 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 65 | 81 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 35 | 52 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 75 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 45 | 85 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 34 | 62 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Liner Search MCP | Tavily API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Liner | Tavily |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://platform.liner.com/api/v1/mcp` | `https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<key>` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | stdio, Streamable HTTP, HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | none | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 9 | 5 |
| MCP registry | `com.liner/search` | `io.github.tavily-ai/tavily-mcp` |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-05-04 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-11-24 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | yes |
| Popularity | none | 2.4k stars, 452k npm/wk, 1.6M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.6/5 (8) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Tavily API + MCP +55: Liner Search MCP 20 (No machine payment protocol (0). Per-call prices public (20). No free tier found (0). A person signs up in a browser for OAuth or an API key (0). 0 + 20 + 0 + 0 = 20.); Tavily API + MCP 75 (Official x402 at x402.tavily.com sells advanced search only, $0.01 in USDC on Base. An unpaid POST to /search returned 402 on 1 November with an x402 version 2 envelope offering the `exact` scheme on eip155:8453 for 10000 units (0.01 USDC), and a second `agent-pay` option on aws:base for 0.016, described as advanced mode. Extract, map, crawl and research aren't sold over x402 (15). Credit costs per endpoint and $0.008 a credit pay as you go, published without a login and unchanged on 1 November (20). 1,000 free credits a month, no card, re-read on 1 November (20). Keyless search and extract with the `X-Tavily-Access-Mode: keyless` header, plus the x402 route, so an agent needs no human signup (20).)
- Schema & documentation, Tavily API + MCP +45: Liner Search MCP 45 (Tool schemas not read without sign-in (15 of 25). llms.txt (10). A table says which tool fits which need, and that the domain tools return the same shape as search_web (12 of 20). Inputs not verifiable (3 of 15). Setup examples, no error responses (5 of 15). Registry version 1.0.0 since 11 September; no changelog found (0). 15 + 10 + 12 + 3 + 5 + 0 = 45.); Tavily API + MCP 90 (Public OpenAPI at docs.tavily.com, and typed JSON Schema on every MCP tool (25). llms.txt with Markdown pages and a 'Start here for agents' section, re-read on 1 November (10). Tool descriptions say what each does and when to reach for it, such as search for facts past the model's cutoff, but the npm release doesn't say when not to. A commit of 27 October on the GitHub main branch adds some, such as using the `news` topic only when the user asks for news and leaving the extract `query` empty for tables, but it isn't released on npm, so the award stays (14). Enums for `search_depth`, `topic`, `time_range` and `include_domains_mode`, ranges for `max_results` (0 to 20 on the API, 5 to 20 in the MCP), `chunks_per_source` (1 to 3) and `max_age_hours` (-1 to 720), and caps of 300 included and 150 excluded domains. The feedback tool on the GitHub main branch, not in the npm release, takes free-form `value` fields (13). Error table with examples for 400, 401, 422, 429, 432, 433, 434 and 500, re-read on 1 November (15). Versioned SDKs and a monthly changelog, which on 1 November has an October 2026 section documenting `max_age_hours` (accepted values and the 434 flex tier) and Tavily CLI plain output, and the search API reference now documents `max_age_hours`. `fetch_timeout` appears only in the 434 example message and `cache_fallback` nowhere in the reference or changelog, and the API path isn't versioned (13).)
- Reliability, Tavily API + MCP +40: Liner Search MCP 50 (incident.io status page at status.liner.com with components for liner.com and app.liner.com only, none for the API or MCP (15). 100% uptime shown since August (20, no incidents shown). Rate limits published per API with numbers (Scholar Search 2 requests a second, agents 2 a second) (15). 429 with a code for concurrency limits, no Retry-After or backoff guidance found (0 of 15). No SLA found (0). Not labelled beta (0 of 10; 'limits may be adjusted over time', GA not stated). 15 + 20 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 50.); Tavily API + MCP 90 (incident.io status page at status.tavily.com with separate API, MCP and website components (20). One incident in the 90 days from 3 August, website degraded performance on 17 September 2026, and none since per the status feed re-read on 1 November. The API and MCP showed 100% per the 1 October check (30). Published limits, re-read on 1 November, 100 requests a minute on development keys and 1,000 on production, crawl 100 and research 20 task creations on both (15). 429 carries `Retry-After` and the docs say to use that value and the status code rather than parse the message. Since October a 434 tells non-paying plans that live fetching with `max_age_hours` is refused under load, with the advice to retry or omit it (15). The pricing page lists 'Enterprise-grade support and SLAs' for the custom Enterprise plan but publishes no SLA terms, per the 17 October check, and none were found in the docs index or terms (0). GA (10).)
- Maintenance & community, Tavily API + MCP +40: Liner Search MCP 45 (Registry entry com.liner/search last updated 11 September 2026 (20). No dated changelog found (0). Support page linked from the docs (10 of 15). Official registry entry under its own namespace (15). No package to read (0). 20 + 0 + 10 + 15 + 0 = 45. Registry presence read from Anchor Terminal's own daily import of the official MCP registry (/api/v1/registry.json, 6 November 2026), not the registry's API.); Tavily API + MCP 85 (@tavily/core 0.7.14 on npm, published on 6 October 2026, and tavily-python bumped to 0.8.5 in the repository the same day (PyPI's pages and release feed returned nothing to us on 1 November, so its publication there is unchecked). No newer SDK release by 1 November, so this line drops to 20 after 5 November unless one lands (30). The tavily-mcp npm release is older, 0.2.22 on 5 August 2026. Version 0.2.23 was committed on 16 September and still isn't on npm on 1 November, though the MCP repository had dependency bumps on 15 and 26 October and new descriptions on 27 October. Eight @tavily/core releases on npm since 5 August, tavily-python version bumps in its repository, tavily-mcp 0.2.22, and August and October changelog entries in the last 90 days (20). Maintainers merge pull requests and dependency fixes within days. Ten issues were open on tavily-mcp on 4 October, the oldest from 14 July 2026, including OAuth failures (#203, #220), empty extracts on single-page sites (#204) and a missing `isError` on a 401 (#211), per the 4 October check, not re-read on 1 November (GitHub answered 403) (15). Listed in the official MCP registry as io.github.tavily-ai/tavily-mcp, though the entry is still at 0.2.15 from 26 January 2026 on 1 November (15). The MCP repo has no CI workflows and no git tags, though it has a test file and regular security bumps. tavily-python runs tests in CI (5).)
- Transparency & trust, Tavily API + MCP +28: Liner Search MCP 34 (Terms and privacy linked from the docs but not read in this batch (5 of 30). Data handling not read (5 of 30). No deprecation policy found for the MCP server; the docs note older endpoints priced per version (5 of 20). Subprocessors not read (5 of 20). 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 20.); Tavily API + MCP 62 (MCP server MIT and SDKs open, API closed under platform terms (18). The privacy policy (last updated 24 November 2025, re-read on 1 November) keeps data for the life of the account with no fixed periods, says query data may be used to improve future responses unless a contract says otherwise, and describes no zero-retention option. No DPA on the privacy page, and the trust centre didn't render for us (per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November) (15). No deprecation policy or dated deprecation notices found, and none in the changelog on 1 November (0). Names Stripe, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, PostHog and third-party search index providers such as Google, with US processing under Standard Contractual Clauses (14).)
- Security & auth, Tavily API + MCP +17: Liner Search MCP 35 (OAuth 2.1 or an API key; scopes not published (20 of 30). All tools are reads (10 of 20). Results carry web pages and documents with no injection guidance (0). No audit log found (0). No security.txt (404) or security programme found (5 of 20). 20 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 5 = 35.); Tavily API + MCP 52 (Revocable keys, separate development and production keys, and the Logs API filters by key, so several keys per account work. The hosted MCP adds OAuth but maps it to one dashboard key with no scopes (22). The MCP README and docs still lead with `?tavilyApiKey=` in the URL on 1 November (minus 10). The five tools in the npm release all read. The GitHub main branch adds `tavily_feedback`, which posts scores to Tavily, the hosted server's tool list is unknown, and there's no read-only toolset (10). The home page says requests pass through 'security, privacy, and content validation layers that block PII leakage, prompt injection, and malicious sources'. That's a claim with no technical detail in the docs, plus a `safe_search` flag for adult content, per the 1 October check (7). The Logs API (filter by key and endpoint since August 2026) and `include_usage` give per-call visibility (13). SOC 2 and ISO 27001 named on the privacy page, per the 4 October check, and the MCP repo patches vulnerable dependencies about monthly (seven updates on 26 October). The trust centre is JavaScript-only for us (per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November), www.tavily.com/.well-known/security.txt returned 404 on 1 November, and no bug bounty found (10).)