Exa

Exa positions itself as the best search API for AI, powering thousands of companies including Notion, Cursor, AWS, Databricks, Groq, Gamma, Monday.com, HubSpot, Lovable, Point72, and Legora. The platform delivers best-in-class accuracy and latency across demanding retrieval benchmarks like FRAMES, Tip-of-Tongue, and Seal0, with Exa Instant returning results in under 180ms.

The platform serves diverse use cases through specialized web indexes: coding agents searching millions of GitHub repos and documentation; news aggregation with always-fresh indexes; financial data access across 70M+ companies; recruiting platforms monitoring 1B+ people and company profiles; and consulting firms running deep research across PDFs, web pages, and expert sources. Target users include AI developers building agentic systems, enterprises requiring reliable web data, startups integrating search capabilities, and researchers needing structured information extraction.

• Structured Output Search: Extracts structured data from web searches using custom schemas, enabling complex enrichment workflows that return organized information like company names, CEO details, and founding years rather than raw text.

• Deep/Agentic Search Mode: Performs multi-step research with reasoning capabilities and structured output support, designed for deep research workflows requiring higher reasoning capability at $12 per 1k requests.

• Token-Efficient Highlights: Extracts the most relevant excerpts from webpages based on queries, reducing token budgets and LLM costs by over 50% while maintaining information quality.

• Multiple Latency Profiles: Offers Instant (under 180ms), Fast, and Auto latency options to match different use case requirements from real-time agent responses to comprehensive research.

• Industry-Specific Web Indexes: Maintains dedicated high-quality indexes for people (1B+ profiles), companies (70M+), code documentation, financial data, and news with always-fresh updates.

• Full Content Retrieval: Retrieves complete webpage contents with options for truncated or highlighted versions, costing $1 per 1k pages per content type.

• Direct Answer API: Provides answers backed by citations at $5 per 1k answers, enabling quick information retrieval without processing full search results.

• Autonomous Research Tasks: Supports agent search operations and agent page reads for complex research workflows, with reasoning tokens available at $5 per 1M.

• Sign up for API access: Create an account at the API Dashboard to receive API credentials and access the free tier of 1,000 requests monthly.

• Choose your search endpoint: Select from Search (standard web search), Agentic Search (deep research with structured outputs), Contents (webpage retrieval), Answer (direct answers), or Research (autonomous tasks) based on your use case.

• Configure search parameters: Set latency profile (Instant, Fast, or Auto), number of results, highlight options, and output schemas for structured data extraction.

• Integrate via API or MCP: Use the REST API directly, or connect through the MCP Server for Model Context Protocol integration with compatible AI systems.

• Test in the playground: Experiment with queries and filters in the dashboard playground before production deployment.

• Monitor usage and optimize: Track request volumes and costs through the dashboard, adjusting highlight lengths and result counts to optimize token efficiency.

• Superior accuracy on benchmarks: Leads competitors on FRAMES, Tip-of-Tongue, and Seal0 retrieval benchmarks with 62-71% accuracy versus 27-56% for alternatives, ensuring more reliable information for AI agents.

• Fastest latency in market: Exa Instant delivers results under 180ms, faster than any other search provider, enabling real-time agent interactions without user wait times.

• Purpose-built for AI agents: Unlike general search APIs, Exa is designed specifically for agentic workflows with structured outputs, reasoning capabilities, and token-efficient processing.

• Massive specialized indexes: Maintains 70M+ company profiles and 1B+ people profiles with dedicated indexes for code, news, and finance, providing comprehensive coverage beyond general web search.

• Significant cost reduction: Token-efficient highlights reduce LLM costs by over 50% compared to processing full webpage contents, making large-scale operations economically viable.

• Enterprise security and compliance: Offers Zero Data Retention, custom rate limits, SLAs, MSAs, and tailored moderation for organizations with strict security requirements.

• Documentation: Comprehensive API reference and guides available at docs.exa.ai covering all endpoints, parameters, and integration patterns.

• API Dashboard: Access the dashboard for account management, usage monitoring, playground testing, and API key management.

• GitHub: Open-source resources, SDKs, and community contributions available at github.com/exa-labs.

• Discord Community: Join the Discord server for developer discussions, troubleshooting, and feature announcements.

• Contact Sales: Enterprise inquiries and custom requirements can be directed through the sales contact form for personalized assistance.

• API Status: Real-time system status and incident reports available at status.exa.ai.

• Web application: Exa is accessible directly through its API at exa.ai and dashboard.exa.ai, with no desktop or mobile client download required. All functionality is available via REST API, MCP Server, and web-based dashboard.

• MCP Server: Install the Model Context Protocol server for integration with MCP-compatible AI systems, available through exa.ai/mcp.

• GitHub Integrations: SDKs and integration examples available at github.com/exa-labs for various programming languages and frameworks.