If you are choosing a search tool for an AI agent on a small budget, the Brave Search vs Tavily question now has a third option. DeepSeek opened its Search and Fetch APIs on October 17, 2026, with a list price far below both. This guide compares the three on confirmed pricing, limits and trade-offs. All dollar figures come from the sources listed at the end.
Table of Contents
Quick summary: which is cheapest?
On list price, DeepSeek is cheapest. DeepSeek’s pricing page lists Search and Fetch at $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests each. Brave charges $5 per 1,000 requests. Tavily’s pay-as-you-go rate works out to $8 per 1,000 basic searches.
Cheapest is not always best, though. DeepSeek has a 5 requests-per-second cap per endpoint and stores personal data in China, according to Startup Fortune. Brave and Tavily both give you a monthly free allowance, and DeepSeek’s free period is narrower than it looks (see below).
Side-by-side comparison
| Item | DeepSeek | Brave Search API | Tavily |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search price per 1,000 | $0.75 | $5.00 (Search plan) | $8 basic search, pay-as-you-go ($0.008 per credit) |
| Page fetch/extract | $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests | Not confirmed in my sources | 1 credit per 5 successful URLs (basic) |
| Free allowance | Free only for server-side calls via DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code and Codex until billing starts | $5 credit monthly, about 1,000 searches | 1,000 credits monthly (Researcher plan), no card required |
| Rate limit | 5 requests per second per endpoint | 50 requests per second (Search plan) | 100 / 1,000 requests per minute (dev / prod key) |
| Monthly plans | None listed | Prepaid credit | $30 for 4,000 credits up to $500 for 100,000 |
Sources for the table: DeepSeek’s pricing page and Startup Fortune; Brave’s own announcement and a pricing write-up dated October 12, 2026; and a Tavily pricing summary.
DeepSeek Search and Fetch: what changed on October 17
DeepSeek announced on X on October 17 that its Search and Fetch APIs are open to everyone, per Startup Fortune. Search finds pages for a query. Fetch retrieves the content of a single page.
Failed requests, empty results and timeouts are not billed. Per-request billing begins at 00:00 Beijing time on November 1, which is 16:00 UTC on October 31, according to Forkast.
What the “free window” really covers
The free period applies to server-side Search and Fetch calls made through DeepSeek Harness, Claude Code and Codex. If you call the standalone endpoints directly from your own code, I could not confirm that they are free before November. Check your DeepSeek dashboard before assuming otherwise.
Treat any free usage as a trial, not a baseline. Budget production workloads at $0.75 per 1,000 calls.
Brave Search vs Tavily: pricing and fit for small teams
For most freelancers, the real day-to-day choice is Brave Search vs Tavily, so here are the details. Brave removed its old free tier in February 2026. It replaced it with a metered system that includes $5 in monthly credits, roughly 1,000 searches. A card is required, and a third-party summary says there is no default spending cap, so set your own alerts.
Brave’s Answers plan is priced at $4 per 1,000 web searches plus $5 per million tokens, per Brave’s announcement. Brave’s Search API terms, updated September 1, 2026, forbid storing results beyond transient storage, according to Katteb. That matters if you plan to build a knowledge base from search results.
Tavily bills in credits. A basic search costs 1 credit and an advanced search costs 2. Extraction costs 1 credit per 5 successful URLs on basic depth. The free Researcher plan gives 1,000 credits a month with no credit card, according to ColdIQ. Paid monthly plans start at $30 for 4,000 credits.
What a small workload costs
These are my own calculations from the list prices above. They exclude taxes, free allowances and model costs. Take 10,000 basic searches a month:
- DeepSeek: 10 × $0.75 = $7.50.
- Brave: 10 × $5 = $50, or about $45 after the $5 monthly credit.
- Tavily at pay-as-you-go: 10,000 credits × $0.008 = $80. On the $30 Project plan, 4,000 credits cover part of that volume at an effective $0.0075 per credit.
Now add page reading. A research step with one search and three page fetches costs $0.003 on DeepSeek, by a Beri.net comparison. The same source puts it at about $0.0128 on Tavily.
Key differences beyond price
Rate limits
DeepSeek’s 5 requests per second per endpoint is fine for a single agent. It can bottleneck workflows that fan out many searches at once. Brave’s 50 requests per second on the Search plan is the most generous of the three.
Data handling
DeepSeek’s privacy policy says personal data is stored in China. Avoid sending client-confidential queries through it unless that is acceptable for your contracts. Beri.net lists DeepSeek’s zero data retention as “not stated”.
Documentation gaps
One reviewer noted that DeepSeek’s docs did not state size caps on fetched pages when they checked. Run a small test against your real use case before committing.
Which one should you choose?
- High volume, non-sensitive research: DeepSeek, because it is the lowest list price and bundles fetching.
- Prototype or very low volume: Tavily’s free 1,000 credits need no card. Brave’s $5 credit covers about 1,000 searches, but a card is required.
- Parallel agents or higher throughput: Brave, with its 50 requests-per-second ceiling.
- Client data involved: favor a provider whose data terms you have reviewed, and check DeepSeek’s carefully first.
A practical approach is to put the search tool behind one function in your agent. You can then switch providers by changing a single call. For a bit more context, see our guides on the DeepSeek V4 Flash API for small business and AI agents for small business. If your agent talks to tools through a standard, Personal Agent Protocol vs MCP is also worth reading.
Bottom line on Brave Search vs Tavily vs DeepSeek
On confirmed list prices, DeepSeek is far cheaper than both rivals. The trade-offs are a 5 requests-per-second cap, data stored in China and docs that leave some limits unstated. In a straight Brave Search vs Tavily match-up, Brave is cheaper per search at $5 vs $8 pay-as-you-go. Tavily is easier to start with thanks to its no-card free tier and built-in extraction credits. Re-check each pricing page before you commit, since these numbers change.