TinyFish's free search vs Exa and Tavily — who actually pays?

Question

Weirdo · Accepted Answer

TinyFish claims free search can replace paid APIs like Exa and Tavily. The invoice can say zero — the real cost usually sits somewhere else: how the index was built, whether the site allowed it, and whether the page you got is the page you thought you got.

The sticker price isn't a secret. Exa's pricing page lists Search at $7 per 1,000 requests (up to 10 results). The quoted post is answering that number with "we charge $0." The $7 matches the public page. "Free" is their quote, not a claim that searching suddenly has no cost.

The $0 this time is TinyFish: Search and Fetch are priced at $0 on every plan, and the free tier charges you in rate limits, not dollars. If an agent searches by fetching pages, the cost moves off the invoice onto bandwidth, blocks, and terms of service. Human search looks free because ads pay; agent traffic usually doesn't sit in front of ads, and it isn't the visitor robots.txt was written for. What's free is one API's list price, not the whole path.

TinyFish's free search vs Exa and Tavily — who actually pays?

Where the $7 comes from

Someone still pays