Tavily vs Mediastack: full comparison for 2026
Quick verdict
Tavily (4.0/5) edges ahead of Mediastack (3.8/5) overall. Tavily is the better choice for agent developers wanting news results in one tool call. Mediastack is the stronger option for hobby projects and low-volume apps on a tight budget. The right pick depends on your budget, how much history you need and whether you need full text.
Tavily vs Mediastack: head-to-head summary
| Criterion | Tavily | Mediastack |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | Not disclosed | 2015 |
| HQ | New York and Tel Aviv; part of Nebius | Vienna, Austria (apilayer); owned by Idera |
| Team size | Part of Nebius | Part of Idera |
| Rating | 4.0 / 5 | 3.8 / 5 |
| Primary differentiator | Prompt-ready extracted content, with integrations for LangChain and LlamaIndex | Paid plans from $24.99 with commercial use and historical data |
| Pricing model | Credits; free monthly allowance; pay-as-you-go | Monthly request plans |
| Entry price | $30/mo | $24.99/mo |
| Formats & SDKs | REST API, JSON, Python SDK | REST API, JSON |
| Typical uses | AI & LLM apps, Research & academia | News & content apps, Marketing & PR |
Tavily vs Mediastack: overview
Tavily
Tavily, founded by CEO Rotem Weiss, sells a search API designed for LLM agents. Its topic=news mode limits results to recent news and returns extracted text that can go straight into a prompt. Nebius, the Nasdaq-listed AI cloud company, agreed to buy Tavily in February 2026 (Bloomberg reported a $275 million price) and later said the deal had closed, with the Tavily brand and pricing kept in place. Billing runs on credits: one per basic search, two per advanced search, about $0.008 each on pay-as-you-go, and 1,000 free credits a month. As a search tool it has no news archive, source taxonomy or clustering.
Mediastack
Mediastack is one of the apilayer products, alongside ipstack and weatherstack. apilayer was founded in Vienna in 2015 by Julian and Paul Zehetmayr and acquired by the US software group Idera in January 2021. The API aggregates live and historical news from 7,500+ sources in 13 languages, filtered by country, category, language and keyword. The free plan allows 100 requests a month, and paid plans run from $24.99 for 10,000 requests to $249.99 for 250,000. Its source list is far smaller than the big crawlers here, and it adds no enrichment beyond basic metadata.
Features: Tavily vs Mediastack
| Capability | Tavily | Mediastack |
|---|---|---|
| Full article text | ✓ | ✗ |
| Historical archive | ✗ | ✓ |
| NLP enrichment | ✗ | ✗ |
| Story/event clustering | ✗ | ✗ |
| Licensed publisher content | ✗ | ✗ |
| Streaming or webhooks | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free access | ✓ | ✓ |
Formats and SDKs: Tavily vs Mediastack
| Format / SDK | Tavily | Mediastack |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Python SDK | ✓ | N/A |
| Node.js SDK | ✓ | N/A |
| Webhooks | N/A | N/A |
| WebSocket | N/A | N/A |
| MCP server | ✓ | N/A |
| S3/bulk delivery | N/A | N/A |
| BigQuery | N/A | N/A |
Pricing comparison: Tavily vs Mediastack
| Criterion | Tavily | Mediastack |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $30/mo | $24.99/mo |
| Pricing model | Credits; free monthly allowance; pay-as-you-go | Monthly request plans |
| Access models | Free tier, Monthly plans, Pay-as-you-go, Enterprise contract | Free tier, Monthly plans |
| Price transparency | Public price | Public price |
| Price tier | Budget | Budget |
Who each API suits: Tavily vs Mediastack
| Dimension | Tavily | Mediastack |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer type | Individuals to enterprise | Individuals to enterprise |
| Typical uses | AI & LLM apps, Research & academia | News & content apps, Marketing & PR |
| Example use cases | Giving a chatbot access to today's news. Research agents that summarise recent coverage. | A news ticker or category feed for a small website. A learning project that needs commercial rights cheaply. |
| How you get access | Free tier | Free tier |
Tavily vs Mediastack: pros and cons
| Tavily | |
|---|---|
| + | Ready-made integrations with LangChain, LlamaIndex and other agent frameworks |
| + | 1,000 free credits a month is enough to prototype an agent |
| + | One call returns cleaned content, so there is no separate scraping step |
| + | Nebius ownership brings funding and its own compute infrastructure |
| - | No historical news archive or source-level filtering |
| - | Freshness depends on the underlying search, with no per-source SLA |
| - | Product priorities may shift under Nebius |
| Mediastack | |
|---|---|
| + | One of the cheapest paid entries among general news APIs, at $24.99 a month |
| + | Same conventions as other apilayer APIs, which helps if you already use one |
| + | Historical news included on paid plans |
| + | Short docs with copy-paste examples |
| - | Only 7,500 sources and 13 languages |
| - | The free plan is 100 requests a month, which runs out in a day of testing |
| - | Descriptions only, with no full text, sentiment or entities |
Who should choose Tavily?
A typical fit: giving a chatbot access to today's news.
Prompt-ready extracted content, with integrations for LangChain and LlamaIndex. Paid access starts at $30/mo. Typical uses: AI & LLM apps, Research & academia.
Who should choose Mediastack?
A typical fit: a news ticker or category feed for a small website.
Paid plans from $24.99 with commercial use and historical data. Paid access starts at $24.99/mo. Typical uses: News & content apps, Marketing & PR.
Decision matrix: Tavily vs Mediastack
| Your situation | Recommended choice |
|---|---|
| You want to start free before paying | Both |
| Your budget is at the lower end | Mediastack |
| You need full article text in the response | Tavily |
| You need years of historical news | Mediastack |
| You need licensed premium or wire content | Neither; look at Factiva, AP or LexisNexis |
| You are wiring news into an LLM agent | Tavily |
Use case fit: Tavily vs Mediastack
| Use case | Tavily fit | Mediastack fit | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI & LLM apps | Strong | Limited | Tavily |
| Research & academia | Strong | Limited | Tavily |
| News & content apps | Limited | Strong | Mediastack |
| Marketing & PR | Limited | Strong | Mediastack |
Verdict: Tavily vs Mediastack
Tavily (4.0/5) is the stronger overall choice as a news data source. Prompt-ready extracted content, with integrations for LangChain and LlamaIndex.
Mediastack (3.8/5) is worth a look if you need a learning project that needs commercial rights cheaply. If your situation matches that, Mediastack is a competitive option.
Related comparisons
Tavily vs Mediastack FAQ
Is Tavily better than Mediastack?
Tavily (4.0/5) scores higher overall, but "better" depends on your use case. Tavily's strongest advantage: ready-made integrations with LangChain, LlamaIndex and other agent frameworks. Mediastack's strongest advantage: one of the cheapest paid entries among general news APIs, at $24.99 a month.
How do Tavily and Mediastack differ in pricing?
Tavily: credits; free monthly allowance; pay-as-you-go, with paid access from $30/mo. Mediastack: monthly request plans, with paid access from $24.99/mo. Both offer some free access for testing.
Which is better for enterprise: Tavily or Mediastack?
Tavily sells enterprise contracts with negotiated volume and SLA terms. Neither carries licensed publisher content, so check copyright terms before republishing anything.
What are the main differences between Tavily and Mediastack?
What sets Tavily apart: prompt-ready extracted content, with integrations for LangChain and LlamaIndex. What sets Mediastack apart: paid plans from $24.99 with commercial use and historical data. They also differ on entry price ($30/mo vs $24.99/mo) and typical uses (AI & LLM apps, Research & academia vs News & content apps, Marketing & PR).
Verify all details directly with each API before making a decision.