Exa

What it is for

Exa is a search API for agents: the signed-out home playground (see the cover: query Latest open source LLMs, Search / Agent, Results) is the same retrieval surface as the HTTP API. Use it when the job is ranked web results plus page contents in one request, not when you want a cited consumer chat.

It is not open source as a product. New accounts start with a Free Tier credit grant. Usage is pay-as-you-go per request after that.

What makes it unique: the cover is the live exa.ai playground (query + Search/Agent + results), not a wordmark.

Key features

• Search playground — type a query, pick Search or Agent, see Results / Answer / Structured (cover).
• Search types — lite / instant / auto / fast, plus Deep Search (deep-lite, deep, deep-reasoning).
• Contents / Answer / Monitors — pull page text, ask a cited question, or schedule recurring searches.
• Agent — fixed-effort or metered runs for list-building and enrichment.
• Free credits — $10 on signup that resets to $10 on the first of each month (docs).

Who it's for

Best fit: developers wiring retrieval into an agent who will pay per 1k requests.

Poor fit: people who want a cited answer box without an API (Perplexity) or a scrape-to-markdown crawler (Firecrawl).

Pricing

Verified 2026-10-21 (Asia/Shanghai) from exa.ai/docs/admin/pricing. Pay-as-you-go; no subscription on that page. Re-check before you buy.

• Free Tier — $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).
• /search lite or instant — $4 / 1k requests (up to 10 results). Extra results $1 / 1k. Instant summaries $1 / 1k pages.
• /search auto or fast — $7 / 1k requests (up to 10 results). Extra results $1 / 1k.
• /answer — $5 / 1k requests.
• /contents — $1 / 1k pages per content type.
• /monitors — $15 / 1k requests.
• Deep Search — deep-lite / deep $12 / 1k; deep-reasoning $15 / 1k.
• Agent (fixed effort) — minimal $0.012 / low $0.025 / medium $0.10 / high $0.50 / xhigh $1.00 per request. Metered auto defaults to a $5 cap; ultra to $20.

Enterprise is quote-only. Do not invent a seat dollar.

Limitations / costs

• Credits are prepaid dollars. Unused Free Tier does not roll into a paid balance on the page we copied.
• Base price covers 10 results. Asking for 20 adds extra-result charges.
• Not a consumer chat. For cited answers without an API key, see Perplexity.
• Agent enrichment is extra (email $0.02, phone $0.07) on top of the run.

Alternatives

• Tavily — credit-priced search/extract/crawl for agents.
• Perplexity — cited consumer answer engine.
• Firecrawl — URL → markdown / JSON scrape, not neural search.

Official tutorial

Official Exa AI Labs channel video: Websets Demo - Advanced Search Techniques for AI Engineers.

Written path: Search pricing plus the signed-out exa.ai playground.

Website

https://exa.ai

Source

Catalog row is curated (2026-10-21). Cover is the live exa.ai Search/Agent playground (Latest open source LLMs + results), not a logo. Dollars checked on exa.ai/docs/admin/pricing (Free $10/mo credit reset; lite/instant $4/1k; auto/fast $7/1k). Tutorial: Websets Demo - Advanced Search Techniques for AI Engineers on @ExaAILabs.

Last verified

2026-10-21 (Asia/Shanghai) editorial check.