Does Tavily's MCP server require an API key?

Tavily MCP

Search API built for AI agents, with built-in answer extraction.

Last updated July 18, 2026

Search/RetrievalRemote · SSEJavaScript2.2k

Overview

Tavily's MCP server exposes its search API, purpose-built for LLM and RAG use cases, giving an agent real-time web search with extracted answers and source content rather than a raw list of links.

Use cases

Get a directly extracted answer to a factual question instead of raw search results.

Ground an agent's response in current web content with citations.

Run a research query and retrieve multiple ranked, summarized sources.

Install

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tavily-remote-mcp": {
      "command": "npx -y mcp-remote https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<your-api-key>",
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

FAQ

Yes, a Tavily API key (free tier available) is required and is passed as a query parameter or OAuth token when connecting.