Pick Exa if
developers wiring retrieval into an agent who will pay per 1k requests.
Read the Exa pageExa vs Firecrawl
Our take
Pick Exa if developers wiring retrieval into an agent who will pay per 1k requests. Pick Firecrawl if developers who need markdown from a URL and will stay on Cloud or self-host. Skip Exa if people who want a cited answer box without an API (Perplexity) or a scrape-to-markdown crawler (Firecrawl). Skip Firecrawl if teams that want ranked neural search (Exa) or a hosted browser session grid (Browserbase).
Best for
Exa Ranked web results plus page contents in one request
Firecrawl Clean page contents for an agent
Free plan
Exa $0 · $10 credits on signup; balance resets to $10 on the 1st of each month. No payment method required. First-team onboarding bonus +$10 one-time (docs)
Firecrawl $0 · 1,000 credits/month. 2 concurrent browsers. No card. No PAYG
Lowest paid
Exa Agent (fixed effort) $0.012
Firecrawl Hobby $16, monthly only
Next step up
Exa `/contents` $1
Firecrawl Standard $83/mo yearly
Coding agent
Exa Search playground
Firecrawl
Runs where
Exa
Firecrawl Local or hosted
Watch out
Exa Credits are prepaid dollars
Firecrawl Hobby/Standard/Growth credits do not roll over
Last checked
Exa 2026-10-21 · exa.ai/docs/admin/pricing
Firecrawl 2026-10-21 · firecrawl.dev/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Firecrawl if
developers who need markdown from a URL and will stay on Cloud or self-host.
Read the Firecrawl page