Connect Tavily to Microsoft Copilot via MCP

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → Tavily, paste your credentials, mint an MCP API key and you're done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

Tavily + Microsoft Copilot

Give your AI live web search built for agents with Tavily: search the web or the news with a short answer and sources, read pages as clean text, map and crawl websites, run longer research jobs and check your credits.

Prerequisites

See the full setup instructions baked into the connector (visible in the in-app store when you select the connector). The required environment variables for this connector are:

TAVILY_API_KEY

Step 1 — Get credentials

1. Sign in at https://app.tavily.com. The free plan includes 1,000 credits a month and needs no card.
2. Copy the API key from the overview page (it starts with tvly-), or create a new one.
3. Paste it into TAVILY_API_KEY as Tavily shows it, without the word Bearer, and install the connector. The key is sent only to Tavily.
4. Start with tavily_get_usage: it shows the credits your key and your plan have used and what is left.

Billed to your own Tavily credits: searches, extractions, maps, crawls and research reports spend credits from your Tavily account, and every answer reports what it used. The connector keeps the cheap defaults unless you ask for more:

• Search: 1 credit for a basic search, 2 for an advanced one.
• Extraction: 1 credit per 5 pages, 2 with advanced extraction.
• Map: 1 credit per 10 pages found.
• Crawl: the map plus the extraction of the pages it reads.
• Research report: 4 to 110 credits with the mini model, 15 to 250 with pro.

What it does: web, news and finance search with ranked sources and an optional short answer, limited by date or to the domains you choose; the content of up to 20 pages as clean markdown, or just the passages that answer a question; the list of a website's pages (map), or map and extraction in one go (crawl); and research reports that Tavily's research agent writes from many searches, which take from about 30 seconds to a few minutes.

Time limit: a call through the connector stops after 30 seconds, so crawls and maps use small limits by default. Research runs in the background: the AI starts it and checks back until the report is ready.

Untrusted content: search results and pages come from the open web. The AI treats instructions it finds inside them as data, not as orders.

Common errors: 401 means the key is wrong, revoked or missing. 432: the key or the plan has used up its credits; upgrade the plan or raise the key's limit in the Tavily dashboard. 433: the pay-as-you-go limit of the account is reached; raise it in the dashboard. 429: too many requests in a short time. 400 or 422: a parameter is invalid, for example a date not written as YYYY-MM-DD.

The connector does not stream research reports, read the request logs or manage organisation usage and keys.

Step 2 — Install the adapter

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
printf 'JWT_SECRET=%s\nENCRYPTION_KEY=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Step 3 — Add the connector in Microsoft Copilot

Your server URL: in AnythingMCP, open MCP Servers → the server this connector is on, and copy its URL (https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/…). Use it wherever this guide shows YOUR_SERVER_ID.

Microsoft Copilot uses MCP servers through agents built in Copilot Studio: you add AnythingMCP to an agent as a tool, then publish the agent to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams. Copilot Studio connects from Microsoft's cloud over Streamable HTTP, which AnythingMCP supports.

1. In Copilot Studio, open your agent (or create one), go to Tools and choose Add a tool → New tool → Model Context Protocol.
2. Enter a Server name (for example AnythingMCP), a Server description that says what the connector does, and the Server URL https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID. Copilot Studio uses the description to decide when to call the server.
3. Under authentication, choose API key, set Type to Header and the header name to X-API-Key, then select Create.
4. In Add tool, choose Create a new connection, paste an MCP API key from AnythingMCP (MCP Servers → your server → API keys) and select Add to agent.
5. Try it in the agent's Test pane: ask for something that needs the Tavily tools.
6. Select Publish, then Channels → Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, keep Make agent available in Microsoft Copilot selected and choose Add channel. See agent in Teams installs it for you; in Microsoft 365 Copilot, type @ and pick the agent.

Prefer per-user sign-in? Choose OAuth 2.0 → Dynamic discovery instead of an API key: each user then signs in to AnythingMCP the first time the agent calls it.

Self-hosting? Use your instance's public HTTPS address instead of https://cloud.anythingmcp.com. Copilot Studio connects from Microsoft's cloud, so localhost does not work.

Available tools

Example prompts

• "Search the news from the past week about EU AI Act enforcement and give me a short summary with sources."
• "Read these three pricing pages and put the plans side by side in a table."
• "Map the docs section of our website and list every page about authentication."
• "Run a research report on heat pump subsidies in Germany in 2026 and tell me how many credits it used."

FAQ

Which Copilot is this for? Microsoft 365 Copilot at work, through agents built in Copilot Studio. The Microsoft Copilot app for personal accounts has no option to add your own MCP server.

What do I need? A work account with access to Copilot Studio (a license or a trial) to build the agent. People who use it in Microsoft 365 Copilot or Teams need access to the agent: share it with them, or ask an admin to publish it to the organization. If your organization applies data policies to Power Platform connectors, they cover MCP servers too.

The agent doesn't call the tools. Check that the header name is exactly X-API-Key and that the key belongs to the same MCP server as the URL, and make the server description specific: Copilot Studio uses it to decide when to call the server. Publish the agent again after each change; in an open chat, type "start over" to get the new version.

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