Basic vs. Advanced Search: What's the Difference?

Last updated: February 3, 2026

When using Tavily’s Search API, you can choose between basic and advanced search.

Basic Search

The basic search is designed for users who need a quick overview of a topic. It efficiently gathers results by pulling general summary snippets from relevant web pages.

Best suited for:

  • Simple, concise queries.

  • Faster responses with minimal processing.

Advanced Search

If your query is broader, multi-step, or requires deeper analysis, the advanced search is the better choice. It prioritizes high-quality sources and more meaningful content snippets, ensuring that the retrieved information is highly relevant rather than just a generic preview.

Key enhancements in Advanced Search:

1. More Relevant Content Snippets

The API extracts content closely aligned with your query, surfacing the most valuable sections of a web page instead of a generic summary.

2. Customizable Content Chunks per Source

A new parameter, chunks_per_source, allows users to specify how many content chunks to retrieve from each source.

  • Default: 3 chunks per source.

  • Recommended range: 1–3, depending on your use case.

3. Raw Content for Deeper Insights

We’ve recently released an improvement that enhances content retrieval, increasing the likelihood of extracting the requested number of chunks per source when you include the include_raw_content=true parameter in your query.

However, please note that enabling raw content may slightly increase latency.

Which Search Mode Should You Use?

  • Use Basic Search when you have concise and simple queries (cost: 1 credit per search).

  • Use Advanced Search when you need deeper insights, more relevant content snippets, and the ability to customize extracted snippets (cost: 2 credits per search).

Want to test it? Try it out in our Tavily Playground