Hard facts side by side: free tiers, prices, limits, SDKs and privacy. Every value links to the official page it came from and is re-checked every week.
| Fact |  Tavily |  Exa |  FirecrawlBuilding block |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes 1,000 API credits per month, no credit card required. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | Yes $10 in credits each month, resets monthly (up to 2,500 Lite searches). Source, Nov 15, 2026 | Yes 1,000 credits per month, no card required. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
| Starting price |
|---|
| $0.008 per credit Pay-as-you-go; the Project plan is $30/month for 4,000 credits. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
| $4 per 1,000 searches Pay-as-you-go Lite search, up to 10 results per request. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
| $16/month Hobby plan, 5,000 credits/month, billed annually. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
| Rate limit | 100 requests/min (free plan) Per organization: Pay as you go and Project 1,000/min, Growth and Scale 1,500/min. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | 10 QPS Default for /search, /answer and /chat/completions; /contents is 100 QPS. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | 10 requests/min Free plan scrape/map/search; crawl is 2/min, 2 concurrent browsers. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
|---|
| Size limit | 20 results per query max_results for the Search endpoint ranges 0 to 20 (default 10). Source, Nov 15, 2026 | 100 results per query Public max for numResults; higher limits by emailing Exa support. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | 10,000 pages per crawl Default crawl limit; larger crawls bounded by available credits. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
|---|
| Official SDKs | PythonJavaScript / TypeScriptSource, Nov 15, 2026 | PythonJavaScript / TypeScript | PythonJavaScript / TypeScript |
|---|
| Open source | Not listed | Not listed | Yes Self-hostable under AGPL-3.0; SDKs are MIT licensed. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
|---|
| EU hosting | Not listed | Not listed | No Privacy policy states servers and data are located in the United States. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
|---|
| Compliance | SOC 2GDPRSource, Nov 15, 2026 | SOC 2 SOC 2 Type II certified. HIPAA is only offered as an Enterprise option to discuss with sales. Source, Nov 15, 2026 | SOC 2 SOC 2 Type II compliant, annual renewal audit in progress; Trust Center at trust.firecrawl.dev. Source, Nov 15, 2026 |
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Wirestack