Tavily vs Firecrawl in 2026

Both calls on one key

An agent that searches with Tavily and reads pages with Firecrawl keeps both. Each call keeps its path, its body and its parser; the address and the key change.

# Tavily, before and after
curl -X POST https://api.tavily.com/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TAVILY_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "Who founded Mistral AI and when?", "max_results": 5}'
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/tavily/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "Who founded Mistral AI and when?", "max_results": 5}'

# Firecrawl, before and after
curl -X POST https://api.firecrawl.dev/v2/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FIRECRAWL_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com/pricing"}'
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/firecrawl/v2/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com/pricing"}'

A search of up to 10 results is $0.005 on either route, and a page read is $0.0008.

What stays the same

On /tavily, query, max_results, include_domains, exclude_domains, time_range and topic are read, and search_depth is accepted at the same price. The reply has query, answer, results[] with title, url, content, score and raw_content, response_time and request_id; favicon and images are not returned. POST /tavily/extract answers with results[] and failed_results[]. Every parameter is in the Tavily migration guide.

On /firecrawl, a search returns success: true and data.web[] with url, title, description and position, and a scrape returns data.markdown and data.metadata; data.html and data.rawHtml are not returned on a scrape. Every parameter is in the Firecrawl migration guide.

Two prices, from one balance

On Tavily pay as you go, 1,000 basic searches cost $8 and 1,000 advanced searches $16, and requests stop when the month's credits run out. Firecrawl sells credits by the month, from $19 for 5,000 to $749 for 1,000,000. SpecStream charges $5 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results and $0.80 per 1,000 pages, from a balance that never expires. A page with no text is not charged, and a busy call gets a 429 with Retry-After and charges nothing.

The most accurate web search API, in about one second

The SpecStream Search API scores a 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions, 978 of them correct, and 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks. The Extract API that answers each scrape and extract scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Every score and its method is on the benchmarks page.

Both search routes run the fast search unless the call asks for page text, the answer or more than ten results. On November 9, 2026 production took 1 to 20 fast searches a second and answered 718 of 720: the median was 0.82 s at 1 search a second and 1.07 s at 20 a second, and the 95th percentile stayed between 1.09 and 1.73 s. There is no limit per key and no daily limit.

You decide what is kept, on each key

Create a key with zero_retention and a call made with it keeps no request text and no answer after the reply: it is not in the history, its answer is not reused for another call, and its log lines carry neither. spend_cap_cents is the most the key can spend.

curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/v1/account/keys \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "production", "scopes": ["account:read", "finds:spend"], "spend_cap_cents": 500000, "zero_retention": true}'

Search, pages and rows on one key

The same key calls GET /v1/web-search, which returns up to 100 results for one search, reads up to 20 pages or documents a call with the Extract API, and runs Deep Search, which returns every match for a request in plain words as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. Save a request and it reruns hourly to yearly, with each row labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching.

SpecStream

The live web data engine for teams and agents. Search at $5 per 1,000 and pages at $0.80 per 1,000, on its own API or on the Tavily, Firecrawl, Brave, Exa and Jina routes, and every match as structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row.

Brave Search API

$5 per 1,000 requests with $5 in free credits a month, from Brave's own index. SpecStream answers Brave's GET /res/v1/web/search at https://api.specstream.ai. Brave Search API vs Tavily.

Exa

Search from $4 per 1,000 requests and contents at $1 per 1,000 pages per content type. SpecStream answers Exa's search and contents at https://api.specstream.ai/exa, pages at $0.80 per 1,000.

Jina Reader

Reads one URL into text and charges tokens by content length, with no dollar rate on its Reader page. SpecStream answers its call at https://api.specstream.ai/jina for $0.0008 a page. Firecrawl vs Jina Reader.