Tavily (app.tavily.com) vs Crawleo.dev: 2026 Comparison, Pricing, Pros & Cons
Khaled Hawwas
In this article we compare Tavily (app.tavily.com) and Crawleo.dev, two APIs designed for developers building AI systems that require real-time web search, crawling, and structured data access. This version has all content reference markers removed and is clean for reuse.
📡 What Is Tavily?
Tavily is an AI-focused web search and extraction API designed to feed real-time information into LLMs, AI agents, and research workflows. It provides endpoints for search, extract, map, and crawl operations with relevance-ranked, structured responses.
Tavily is commonly used in:
- AI agents and assistants
- Research automation
- Lightweight RAG pipelines
- Content discovery tools
💰 Tavily Pricing
Tavily uses a credit-based pricing model with monthly subscriptions and a pay-as-you-go option.
| Plan | Price | Monthly Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Free (Researcher) | $0 | 1,000 credits |
| Project | $30 / month | 4,000 credits |
| Bootstrap | $100 / month | 15,000 credits |
| Startup | $220 / month | 38,000 credits |
| Growth | $500 / month | 100,000 credits |
| Pay-As-You-Go | $0.008 / credit | Usage-based |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom |
Credits are shared across all API operations such as search, extract, map, and crawl.
✅ Tavily Pros
- AI-optimized responses designed for LLM consumption
- Free tier suitable for experimentation and demos
- Multiple endpoints beyond basic search
- Flexible pricing with both subscriptions and pay-as-you-go
- Simple API design for fast integration
❌ Tavily Cons
- Credit usage can become expensive at scale
- Crawling depth and control are limited compared to dedicated crawlers
- Less emphasis on multi-format outputs like Markdown for RAG
- Partial data retention, not strictly zero-retention
🌐 What Is Crawleo.dev?
Crawleo.dev is a privacy-first, real-time web search and crawling API built specifically for AI, RAG pipelines, and automation workflows. It combines search and deep crawling in one platform and returns content in formats optimized for LLMs.
Crawleo focuses on:
- Search + crawl in a single workflow
- Clean, structured outputs
- Zero data retention
- Predictable pricing for developers
💰 Crawleo.dev Pricing
Crawleo uses a subscription-based credit model with monthly quotas. Pricing below reflects typical annual billing discounts.
| Plan | Price | Monthly Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10,000 credits |
| Developer | ~$17 / month | 100,000 credits |
| Pro | ~$83 / month | 1,000,000 credits |
| Scale | ~$167 / month | 3,000,000 credits |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom |
Credits are consumed differently for search requests and crawl pages, with crawling optimized for bulk extraction.
✅ Crawleo.dev Pros
- Unified search and deep crawling API
- Zero data retention, privacy-first architecture
- Outputs optimized for RAG, Markdown, text, and JSON
- Native support for MCP and LangChain workflows
- Predictable pricing that scales efficiently
❌ Crawleo.dev Cons
- Best pricing requires annual billing
- Credit system requires planning between search and crawl usage
- Free tier search limits are modest for heavy testing
- Newer brand compared to older search APIs
🔍 Tavily vs Crawleo.dev Comparison
| Feature | Tavily | Crawleo.dev |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | AI search and extraction | Search + deep crawling |
| Pricing Model | Subscription + pay-as-you-go | Subscription with quotas |
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| Best Use Case | AI research and agents | RAG and automation pipelines |
| Output Formats | JSON | JSON, Markdown, text, HTML |
| Privacy Model | Standard retention | Zero data retention |
📌 Final Thoughts
Tavily is a strong choice for AI teams that need lightweight, AI-ranked web search and extraction with flexible pricing. It works well for agents and research-heavy workflows.
Crawleo.dev is better suited for developers building production-grade RAG systems, automation pipelines, or privacy-sensitive AI applications that require deep crawling and structured outputs.
Your choice depends on whether you prioritize fast AI search (Tavily) or full search-plus-crawl control with privacy guarantees (Crawleo).
Tags
Related Posts
How to Build LLM Training Datasets at Scale with Web Crawling
Training modern large language models requires massive, continuously updated datasets sourced from the open web. This guide explains how AI teams can build scalable, high quality LLM training datasets using web crawling, with practical architecture patterns and best practices.
Rate Limiting, Proxies, and CAPTCHAs: Why DIY Scraping Does Not Scale
Building your own web scraping stack seems simple at first, until rate limits, proxy bans, and CAPTCHAs bring everything to a halt. This article explains why DIY scraping fails at scale and how Crawleo removes these hidden costs for developers and AI teams.
Building Advanced AI Agents: How to Combine RAG with Real-Time Web Search
Learn how to bridge the gap between internal company knowledge and the live web. This guide explores a powerful pattern for building AI agents that can query private handbooks while simultaneously performing filtered real-time web searches to provide the most accurate, cited responses.