Tavily is a search API built for AI agents, and its official MCP server exposes search, content extraction, site mapping and crawling — clean, structured web data your agent can act on. Here's the setup.
Step 1 — get an API key
Sign up at Tavily and copy your API key (starts with tvly-). There's a free monthly credit tier.
Step 2 — configure the client
Local via npx:
{
"mcpServers": {
"tavily": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "tavily-mcp@latest"],
"env": {
"TAVILY_API_KEY": "tvly-your_key"
}
}
}
}
Tavily also hosts a remote endpoint you can add as an OAuth/URL connector if your client supports remote MCP. Restart the client; see MCP config file location.
What it exposes
- search — real-time web results tuned for LLMs.
- extract — clean content from specific URLs.
- map / crawl — discover and pull a site's pages.
Verify
Ask: "Use Tavily to find and extract the 3 best guides on MCP security, with sources." Structured results back confirm it works.
Common problems
401/ invalid key — recheck thetvly-key.- Quota exceeded — you used the free credits; add billing or wait for reset.
- No tools in client — Node 18+ for
npx; see Cursor MCP not working.
Going further
Tavily pairs with Sequential Thinking and a filesystem server for research agents. Compare with Perplexity (synthesized answers) and Bright Data (heavy scraping/unblocking). Browse the search category or curated loadouts.