MCP server Official

Tavily MCP Server

Tavily MCP server: real-time web search, page extraction, site mapping and crawling for AI agents.

Author: Tavily
Works with: Any MCP client, Claude Code, Cursor
License: MIT
Documented: Oct 2, 2026

What Tavily MCP Server is

The Tavily MCP server provides search, extract, map and crawl tools. It is available as a remote server at mcp.tavily.com or locally via npx. Authentication is by Tavily API key or OAuth.

What it does

Where Tavily MCP Server runs and what it adds, from its documentation

tavily-search: real-time web search
tavily-extract: extract data from web pages
tavily-map: build a structured map of a website
tavily-crawl: systematically explore a website
DEFAULT_PARAMETERS to set search defaults such as max_results and search_depth

When to use it

Good fit

Your agent needs live web search with extraction in one server
You want to crawl or map a documentation site
You want a hosted remote server with OAuth

Not for

Use without a Tavily API key or OAuth sign-in

How to install Tavily MCP Server

You need: Tavily API key (free account available); Node.js v20 or higher for local use

Get a Tavily API key at tavily.com
Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http tavily https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp/?tavilyApiKey=
Or omit the key and run /mcp in Claude Code to complete OAuth
Local alternative: npx -y tavily-mcp@latest with TAVILY_API_KEY set (Node.js v20+)
Cursor: add the mcp.json entry below with your key

Configuration example (from the official docs)

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

Permissions and security

What it can access

Network calls to Tavily with your queries and URLs

Security notes from the maintainers

API key in the URL query is visible in config; the Authorization: Bearer header is an alternative
Optional TAVILY_HUMAN_ID is forwarded as X-Human-Id; Tavily hashes it (SHA-256) server-side; prefer opaque IDs over PII

Review the source before granting an agent access to credentials or production systems. We document what the maintainers state; we do not audit code.