Exa

What is Exa?

Exa is a search API built for AI applications that returns web results and page contents for models and agents. Its products include instant and deep search, contents retrieval, an answer endpoint, monitors and an agent endpoint.

Key capabilities of Exa

• Neural web search API: instant and fast or auto search modes
• Deep Search: higher-effort search for complex queries
• Contents retrieval: fetches page text at $1 per 1,000 pages
• Answer endpoint: returns answers with sources
• Monitors: track queries over time
• Agent endpoint: runs research tasks with compute units

How Exa works

Developers call the API with a query and receive ranked results, optionally with page contents or AI summaries. The Answer endpoint adds a generated response with sources, while Agent requests use compute units billed at $0.10 each. There is no subscription: usage is billed per request, and extra results above 10 cost $1 per 1,000.

Who uses Exa?

Developers building AI assistants, research agents and data pipelines use it. Enterprises needing volume discounts, postpaid invoicing, custom indexes or stricter requirements can contact sales.

Exa pricing

Exa is pay as you go. Instant search is $4 per 1,000 requests, fast or auto search $7, Deep Search $12 to $15, Contents $1 per 1,000 pages, Answer $5 and Monitors $15. A free tier gives $10 in credits monthly, up to 2,500 instant searches.

Exa alternatives

Alternatives include Perplexity AI for answer-first search, You.com for multi-model search and APIs, Phind for developer search, Genspark for agent-style search, and Needl.ai for enterprise search.