TheCrawler: a Tavily alternative for teams reconsidering after the Nebius acquisition
After Tavily's Nebius acquisition (announced Feb 2026), teams wanting a cost-predictable, self-hostable web-data API can use TheCrawler, which runs AI extraction on its own GPU at no per-credit cost.
Tavily vs TheCrawler — at a glance
| Capability | Tavily | TheCrawler |
|---|---|---|
| AI-extraction billing | Per credit ($0.008/credit PAYGO, published) | No per-call surcharge — runs on our own GPU |
| Crawl / JS-render fidelity | Thinner | Adaptive Cheerio → Playwright; tables, JSON-LD, PDF, DOCX |
| Validated extraction contracts | None | Typed + required-field validated |
| Pre-flight readiness guard (/diagnose) | None | Yes |
| Live web search → scrape (/v1/search) | Yes (search API) | Yes — top Google results, scraped per query |
| Answer-synthesis search (composed answer + citations) | Yes — their headline | No — plain web search only |
| Agentic deep research (/research) | Yes | On the roadmap |
| Rate-limit ceilings on agent loops | A cited user pain | Own-GPU; no per-call metered ceiling |
| Distribution / MCP | Remote MCP + LangChain/LlamaIndex default | stdio MCP today; partner packages building |
The real difference: who pays for the GPU
Tavily bills the AI step per credit ($0.008/credit on published PAYGO pricing) because its marginal cost is a per-call inference bill. TheCrawler runs the extraction model on a GPU we already own, so the marginal cost of one more extraction is electricity, not an invoice — there's no per-call AI surcharge. There's real capex, power, and ops behind that (it isn't "AI is free"), but AI extraction is priced like a plain scrape rather than metered per call.
That matters most for agent loops: a per-call meter is exactly what produces surprise bills and rate-limit ceilings when your agent runs extraction in a loop.
Estimate your AI-extraction surcharge
What does the AI-extraction surcharge cost you?
Enter your own numbers — we don't guess your provider's price. This shows only the per-call AI-extraction surcharge, the part TheCrawler doesn't charge because the extraction model runs on our own GPU.
Figures use the price youentered; TheCrawler still bills per page (AI included) and we don't charge for failed or empty extractions. This is a marginal-cost comparison of the AI surcharge, not total spend.
Where Tavily wins (honestly)
Tavily is genuinely ahead on several things — if these are your priority, it's the better pick:
- Answer-synthesis on
/search— a single composed answer with citations. TheCrawler returns the scraped result pages, not a synthesized answer. - The
/researchdeep-research endpoint. - Search-relevance re-ranking IP.
- Distribution: LangChain / LlamaIndex defaults and a hosted remote MCP.
TheCrawler's edge is cost-predictable web search (/v1/search) and validated, cost-guarded structured extraction — what it doesn't do is answer-synthesis.
Migrate in a few lines
curl -X POST https://www.miaibot.ai/api/v1/scrape \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CRAWLER_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "url": "https://example.com", "markdown": true, "metadata": true }'See also: Firecrawl alternative and Firecrawl vs Tavily vs TheCrawler.
FAQ
Is Tavily still independent after Nebius?
Tavily's acquisition by Nebius was announced in Feb 2026 (reported at roughly $275M). For roadmap or pricing certainty, evaluate current terms directly with the vendor — this page is about having a cost-predictable, self-hostable alternative if you want one.
What's a self-hostable Tavily alternative?
TheCrawler runs the extraction LLM on its own on-prem GPU, and the crawl engine is open source. You can also point it at your own OpenAI-compatible LLM endpoint for synchronous extraction.
Does TheCrawler do web search like Tavily?
Yes for plain web search — /v1/search returns the top Google results scraped to markdown/JSON. What it doesn't do is Tavily-style answer-synthesis (a single composed answer with citations) or the /research agent; those are genuine Tavily strengths. TheCrawler's focus is cost-predictable search + structured extraction.
Will TheCrawler rate-limit my agent loops?
Extraction runs on our own GPU rather than a metered per-call API, so there's no per-call billing ceiling. Throughput is bounded by hardware capacity, which we scale — there is no surprise per-call meter.
Tavily extract vs TheCrawler extract?
Tavily bills extraction per credit; TheCrawler includes AI extraction in the page fee with no per-call surcharge, adds validated contracts and a pre-flight /diagnose cost guard, and refunds failed or empty extractions.