Tavily vs Exa vs x402 search APIs: subscription or pay per call?
Vendor prices checked Oct 28, 2026 · x402 data measured daily · not ranked
Tavily sells search through monthly credit plans (plus a pay-as-you-go rate). Exa is already pay-as-you-go. x402 search tools charge each call in USDC, with no plan to buy up front. Below are each vendor’s published prices, the x402 search tools in our directory with the prices, uptime (with how many checks it is based on; monitoring started Oct 2026) and latency we measure, and a calculator for your own monthly volume.
Calculator: what you pay per search you actually use
Plan cost this month
$30.00
Billed in full every month
Unused credits
2,000
of 4,000 credits in the plan
Cost per search used
$0.015
2,000 searches × 1 credit each
With Tavily (x402 route)
$20.00
2,000 calls × $0.01 USDC (measured price)
At 2,000 searches a month, Tavily (x402 route) would cost $10.00 less than this option (33% less).
Plan prices: docs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits, checked Oct 28, 2026. Overage at $0.008 per credit applies only if pay-as-you-go is switched on; per Tavily, requests otherwise stop until credits reset on the 1st. Assumes one call per search with up to 10 results (Exa bills extra results above 10). x402 prices are what our probe saw on one route; your request options can change the price. Free tiers are not subtracted.
Published Tavily and Exa prices
Tavily: monthly credit plans
A basic search uses 1 credit, an advanced search 2. Credits reset on the 1st of each month.
| Plan | Price | Credits | Per credit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Researcher | Free | 1,000 credits / month | – |
| Pay As You Go | Per usage | Per usage | $0.008 per credit |
| Project | $30 / month | 4,000 credits / month | $0.0075 per credit |
| Bootstrap | $100 / month | 15,000 credits / month | $0.0067 per credit |
| Startup | $220 / month | 38,000 credits / month | $0.0058 per credit |
| Growth | $500 / month | 100,000 credits / month | $0.005 per credit |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Sources: tavily.com/pricing and docs.tavily.com (Credits & Pricing), checked Oct 28, 2026.
Exa: pay-as-you-go, no subscription
Base price includes up to 10 results; each result above 10 adds $1 per 1k. $10 in free credits each month.
| Endpoint | Price | Per request |
|---|---|---|
| /search (lite) | $4 / 1k requests | $0.004 |
| /search (instant, legacy) | $4 / 1k requests | $0.004 |
| /search (auto, fast) | $7 / 1k requests | $0.007 |
| /search (deep-lite, deep) | $12 / 1k requests | $0.012 |
| /answer | $5 / 1k requests | $0.005 |
| /contents | $1 / 1k pages, per content type | $0.001 |
Source: exa.ai/pricing, checked Oct 28, 2026. Enterprise volume pricing is quoted on request.
x402 pay-per-call search tools we measure
Listings in our Web Search & Scraping category whose checked route is a web search endpoint and answered with valid x402 payment terms. Tavily and Exa run x402 routes of their own, so they appear here too.
| Tool | Route checked | Price per call (seen) | Per 1,000 calls | Uptime (7 days) | Latency (last check) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browserbase Payment GatewayListed: $0.01–$0.06 | POST /search | $0.01 USDC | $10.00 | 100% (4 checks so far)4 of 4 up · new, monitoring started Oct 2026 | 647 ms | UpOct 30, 2026, 2:10 PM ET |
| Exa (x402 route)Listed: $0.001–$0.007 | POST /search | $0.007 USDC | $7.00 | 100% (4 checks so far)4 of 4 up · new, monitoring started Oct 2026 | 499 ms | UpOct 30, 2026, 1:30 PM ET |
| serp402 (Google results)Listed: $0.05 (company profile $0.20) | POST /api/v1/search | $0.05 USDC | $50.00 | 100% (4 checks so far)4 of 4 up · new, monitoring started Oct 2026 | 342 ms | UpOct 30, 2026, 2:00 PM ET |
| Tavily (x402 route)Listed: $0.01 | POST /search | $0.01 USDC | $10.00 | 100% (4 checks so far)4 of 4 up · new, monitoring started Oct 2026 | 1408 ms | UpOct 30, 2026, 1:30 PM ET |
| You.comListed: $0.005–$0.11 | GET /v1/search | $0.005 USDC | $5.00 | 100% (4 checks so far)4 of 4 up · new, monitoring started Oct 2026 | 942 ms | UpOct 30, 2026, 1:30 PM ET |
Data taken Oct 30, 2026, 5:58 PM ET from api.youraitools.co/stats/v1/listings (loaded live on this visit). One unpaid request per listing per day to the route shown; price is the USDC amount in the x402 payment terms we saw, latency is that single request, and uptime counts daily checks since Oct 27, 2026 (4 daily checks per tool so far, so it is an early sample). Not a test of result quality. Other routes and options can be priced differently. Listed A to Z.
How to choose
If your volume is steady and you use most of a plan’s credits, a monthly plan can cost less per search. If your volume is low or uneven, or an agent needs to pay for searches on its own without a stored API key, paying per call avoids unused credits. Results, filters and content options differ between these APIs, so test the ones you shortlist on your own queries.
switch402 (our own product, beta) handles scraping, not search.
FAQ
Is Exa a subscription?
No. Exa’s pricing page says it is pay-as-you-go with no subscription and no minimum spend: you load credits and pay per request. /search costs $4 per 1,000 requests (lite) or $7 per 1,000 (auto, fast), with up to 10 results included, and new accounts get $10 in free credits that reset monthly (checked Oct 28, 2026).
How much does one Tavily search cost?
Per Tavily’s docs, a basic search uses 1 API credit and an advanced search uses 2. Credits cost $0.008 each on Pay As You Go and $0.0075 to $0.005 each on the monthly plans (Project $30 for 4,000 credits up to Growth $500 for 100,000). The free Researcher plan includes 1,000 credits a month, and credits reset on the first day of each month (checked Oct 28, 2026).
What are unused credits?
A monthly plan bills the full price even if you use only part of its credits. In the calculator, unused credits are the plan’s monthly credits minus the credits your searches use, and cost per search is the plan price divided by the searches you actually ran.
What is an x402 search API?
x402 is an open HTTP payment standard: the API answers an unpaid request with HTTP 402 and its price, and your client pays that request in USDC and retries. There is no monthly plan, so you pay only for the calls you make. Tavily and Exa both run x402 routes of their own, listed in our directory.
Where do the x402 prices, uptime and latency come from?
From our own daily unpaid check of each listing’s example endpoint (api.youraitools.co/stats/v1/listings). Price is the USDC amount in the 402 payment terms we saw; latency is the time of that one unpaid request; uptime is the share of daily checks that got an answer. It is an availability check, not a test of result quality, and prices can differ by route or options. Monitoring is new (started Oct 27, 2026): so far that is 4 daily checks per tool, so treat uptime as an early sample.
Does switch402 route search requests?
No. switch402 is our own product, in beta, and it handles scraping, not search. Nothing on this page is routed through it.
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