Exa
Choose search depth and result counts before letting an agent expand its web research budget.
- Starting price
- Lite USD 4/1k requests
- Free access
- USD 10 monthly credits
- Billing unit
- Requests, results and pages
- Platform
- Search, Contents and Agent APIs
- Verified
- 22 Oct 2026
Overview
What you provide
- Send a query with a search mode, result count and requested content types.
What you get
- Exa returns relevant pages and optional content, or an asynchronous research result when using Agent.
Choosing this tool
Exa suits applications where retrieval latency, full-page content and deeper research are separate design choices. A code assistant can use Lite for frequent lookups and reserve deeper modes for unresolved questions. Compare You.com for a straightforward per-call search baseline and Tavily for an operation-credit balance.
A decision worked through
One thousand Lite requests with no more than 10 results cost USD 4 before credits. Asking for 20 results adds ten extra-result units per request: the published USD 1 per extra result per thousand requests adds USD 10, reaching USD 14 before content extras.
Exa alternatives for search and research with explicit depth
Compare Exa with You.com, Tavily for search and research with explicit depth. Match billing units and operating responsibility before comparing rates.
| Product | Price / unit | Free allowance | Input → output | Key limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExaRead profileOfficial source ↗ | Lite USD 4/1k, up to 10 results | USD 10 credits/mo | Query becomes pages or research. | Extra results are billable. |
| You.comRead profileOfficial source ↗ | Search USD 5/1k calls | MCP 100 queries/day | Queries become sourced web data. | Research uses different rates. |
| TavilyRead profileOfficial source ↗ | PAYG USD 0.008/credit | 1,000 credits/mo | Queries become retrieval evidence. | Credits differ by operation. |
Setup & workflow
- Set a result limit and default to the least complex suitable search mode.
- Measure relevance and latency on your own question set.
- Enable deeper research only with explicit per-run spending limits.
Requirements & installation
- Create an Exa account and configure its API key and request limits in your application.
Limits & review
- Agent contact enrichment is charged separately, and additional results or summaries increase the retrieval bill. Published speed descriptions are not a latency guarantee for your workload.
Your part
- Review retrieval relevance and quoted passages instead of accepting a mode label as proof of research quality.
Sources & verification4
This profile is based on official sources, not a hands-on product test.
Vendor descriptions and demos document advertised features. Editorial guidance is based on these sources.
- Official Exa functionalityexa.ai
- Official Exa pricingexa.ai
- You.com official referenceyou.com
- Tavily official referencewww.tavily.com
