MCP100 verdict
Not currently recommended. Useful first-party search/research MCP with hosted OAuth/API-key options, but recent security hardening means it should remain Watchlist for now.
MCP100 Assessment
Editorial verdict
Reviewed September 11, 2026
Task Fit
Mapped
Web search and research
Trust
Status warning
Editorial trust review has not been completed.
Maintenance
Date unavailable
No dated repository or package update is currently stored.
Popularity
Signals unavailable
No independently comparable adoption metric is currently stored.
Evidence scope
No MCP-specific repository metric is stored
No MCP-specific package metric is stored
Stars observation date unavailable · Downloads observation date unavailable
Publisher activity observed September 11, 2026
Current source snapshot
Source relationship: First-party MCP
Reviewed September 11, 2026
Evidence-backed setup
Choose your MCP client. A client connects to the MCP server; the language model is selected inside that client. Only stored, source-backed configurations are shown.
Transport not recorded
No sufficient client-specific setup evidence has been stored from the publisher or client documentation.
Publisher-documented setup is not the same as MCP100 execution testing. “MCP100 logic checked” means the stored configuration shape was reviewed, not that third-party MCP software was run.
Evidence checked 2026-09-11T00:00:00.000Z
Type-appropriate, source-backed setup for this mcp server profile.
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No complete evidence-backed client setup steps are currently stored. Optional publisher documentation may provide additional context below.
Capability
Useful first-party search/research MCP with hosted OAuth/API-key options, but recent security hardening means it should remain Watchlist for now.
Search the web through Tavily.
Extract content from URLs.
Map/discover links from a site.
Crawl a site for content.
Not measured yet
Estimated token footprint of the MCP tool schemas exposed to the agent.
Reviewed access
Review the exact access boundary before connecting this MCP to accounts, credentials, or sensitive data.
Related reviewed MCPs
Search, scrape, crawl, and extract web content through Firecrawl.
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Choose Firecrawl MCP instead if scraping and extracting public web pages.
Search, scrape, crawl, and extract web content through Firecrawl.
Search Hugging Face Hub resources and use explicitly enabled Jobs, sandboxes, and community Space tools.
Choose this instead if
Choose Hugging Face MCP instead if searching models, datasets, Spaces, papers, and Hugging Face documentation.
Search Hugging Face Hub resources and use explicitly enabled Jobs, sandboxes, and community Space tools.
Connect compatible AI clients to Perplexity's documented MCP capabilities.
Choose this instead if
Choose Perplexity MCP instead if current web search and cited question answering with Perplexity APIs.
Recommended first-party Perplexity MCP for real-time search, question answering, reasoning, and deep research through a small four-tool surface.
Tavily is listed as First-party MCP in MCP100’s current evidence.
Current official resources:
Original product, capability, tool, and usage documentation from the MCP publisher. Installation sections appear under Install & Agents.
The Tavily MCP server provides:
Claude Code is Anthropic's official CLI tool for Claude. You can add the Tavily MCP server using the claude mcp add command. There are two ways to authenticate:
Pass your API key directly in the URL. Replace <your-api-key> with your actual Tavily API key:
claude mcp add --transport http tavily https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<your-api-key>
Add the server without an API key in the URL:
claude mcp add --transport http tavily https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp
After adding, you'll need to complete the authentication flow:
claude to start Claude Code/mcp to open the MCP server managementTip: Add --scope user to either command to make the Tavily MCP server available globally across all your projects:
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user tavily https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<your-api-key>
Once configured, you'll have access to the Tavily search, extract, map, and crawl tools.
Click the ⬆️ Add to Cursor ⬆️ button, this will do most of the work for you but you will still need to edit the configuration to add your API-KEY. You can get a Tavily API key here.
once you click the button you should be redirect to Cursor ...
Click the install button
You should see the MCP is now installed, if the blue slide is not already turned on, manually turn it on. You also need to edit the configuration to include your own Tavily API key.
You will then be redirected to your mcp.json file where you have to add your-api-key.
{
"mcpServers": {
"tavily-remote-mcp": {
"command": "npx -y mcp-remote https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<your-api-key>",
"env": {}
}
}
}
Before you begin, ensure you have:
node --versionbrew install gitsudo apt install gitsudo yum install gitnpx -y tavily-mcp@latest
You can set default parameter values for the tavily-search tool using the DEFAULT_PARAMETERS environment variable. This allows you to configure default search behavior without specifying these parameters in every request.
export DEFAULT_PARAMETERS='{"include_images": true}'
{
"mcpServers": {
"tavily-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "tavily-mcp@latest"],
"env": {
"TAVILY_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here",
"DEFAULT_PARAMETERS": "{\"include_images\": true, \"max_results\": 15, \"search_depth\": \"advanced\"}"
}
}
}
}
You can optionally identify the end user on whose behalf requests are being made by setting the TAVILY_HUMAN_ID environment variable. When set, Tavily MCP forwards it as the X-Human-Id header on every API call, enabling per-user analytics.
This is entirely optional — leave it unset and behavior is unchanged.
{
"mcpServers": {
"tavily-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "tavily-mcp@latest"],
"env": {
"TAVILY_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here",
"TAVILY_HUMAN_ID": "your-user-id"
}
}
}
}
Privacy note: Tavily hashes human_id server-side (SHA-256) before storage, so the raw value is never persisted. Even so, prefer opaque identifiers (e.g. an internal user ID) over raw PII like emails when possible.
From the publisher README
Original client setup and configuration retained from the publisher documentation.
Publisher-documented clients
These names appear in the publisher's installation documentation. MCP100-verified configurations are shown separately above when available.
Connect directly to Tavily's remote MCP server instead of running it locally. This provides a seamless experience without requiring local installation or configuration.
Simply use the remote MCP server URL with your Tavily API key:
https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=<your-api-key>
Get your Tavily API key from tavily.com.
Alternatively, you can pass your API key through an Authorization header if the MCP client supports this:
Authorization: Bearer <your-api-key>
Note: When using the remote MCP, you can specify default parameters for all requests by including a DEFAULT_PARAMETERS header containing a JSON object with your desired defaults. Example:
{"include_images":true, "search_depth": "basic", "max_results": 10}
The Tavily Remote MCP server supports secure OAuth authentication, allowing you to connect and authorize seamlessly with compatible clients.
A. Using MCP Inspector:
Once finished, you will receive an access token that lets you securely make authenticated requests to the Tavily Remote MCP server.
B. Using other MCP Clients (Example: Cursor):
You can configure your MCP client to use OAuth without including your Tavily API key in the URL. For example, in your mcp.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"tavily-remote-mcp": {
"command": "npx mcp-remote https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp",
"env": {}
}
}
}
If you need to clear stored OAuth credentials and reauthenticate, run:
rm -rf ~/.mcp-auth
Note:
- OAuth authentication is optional. You can still use API key authentication at any time by including your Tavily API key in the URL query parameter (
?tavilyApiKey=...) or by setting it in theAuthorizationheader, as described above.
After successful OAuth authentication, you can control which API key is used by naming it mcp_auth_default:
mcp_auth_default in your personal account, that key will be used for the auth flow.mcp_auth_default, that key will be used for the auth flow.mcp_auth_default, the personal key will be prioritized.mcp_auth_default key is set, the default key in your personal account will be used. If no default key is set, the first available key will be used.