Search and Retrieval APIs

How to read this category

Search APIs are how an agent learns anything it was not told. These three take different positions: Tavily bundles search with extraction, crawling, mapping, and a research endpoint; Exa concentrates on the search call itself with modes from roughly 250 millisecond instant retrieval to deep synthesis runs; Brave rents out an independent index with local and place search on the side.

The practical choice is what happens after the results land. If your agent still needs to read the pages, a bundle or a strong highlights mode saves a second vendor. If you mostly need ranked evidence fast, search depth and latency matter more than bundled extras.

All three are hosted APIs billed by the call. Meter an unattended loop before you trust it; search is cheap per query and expensive per thousand.

What actually decides the choice

• Pick by the shape of work: discovery plus reading points at Tavily, latency-tiered search quality points at Exa, an independent index and place data point at Brave.
• Result shape matters: highlights sized for the context window, full text per result, or synthesized answers with sources attached.
• Do not buy a bundle you will not run. Teams that already have extraction covered should compare the search calls alone.
• MCP support exists on all three; check the server pages here for the exact transport and config.