# Exa — Web search, contents and agentic research APIs built for AI agents, billed per request. > Source: The Agents Index — https://theagentsindex.com/exa (structured, researched, re-verified) Exa is a web search and retrieval platform that runs its own index of the public web and returns query-relevant excerpts, full contents, cited answers and scheduled monitors via API. An asynchronous Agent endpoint handles multi-step research, list building and enrichment. **Best for:** Developers grounding AI agents and assistants in live web, company and people data | Fact | Value | | --- | --- | | Website | https://exa.ai | | Category | Web search & scraping APIs | | Open source | Partly | | Price | Free | | Price source | https://exa.ai/pricing | | Price checked | 26 October 2026 | | MCP server | Yes | | API | Not stated | | Self-host | Not stated | | Facts | 20 facts from 9 sources | | Facts checked | 26 October 2026 | Screenshot of Exa: https://theagentsindex.com/img/1920/screenshots/exa.webp, captured 28 October 2026 **What we checked** - Pages last read: 26 October 2026 - Facts checked: 20 facts (From 9 sources) - AI answers: Named in 1 of 151 (Our October check) ## What we checked on Exa ### How much it does unattended **Multi-agent** · Yes — A single Exa Agent run fans out many searches and splits list building into subtasks that run in parallel, so coordination happens inside Exa rather than needing the buyer to orchestrate separate agents. > A single run can fan out many searches across different angles, read and condense the pages behind them, split list building into subtasks that run in parallel, verify each candidate against your criteria, enrich contacts > — https://exa.ai/docs/agent/quickstart.md · Exa Agent overview, second paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 **Agent permissions** · Partly — You constrain a run rather than approve steps: effort modes set a flat price or a per-run spend cap ($5 on auto, $20 on ultra), includeDomains and excludeDomains restrict sources, and an API key can carry its own budget; no step-level human approval is documented. > Metered runs bill actual usage up to their per-run cap. `auto` defaults to a $5 cap; `ultra` defaults to a $20 cap > — https://exa.ai/pricing · Agent section, paragraph above the usage component table, checked 26 October 2026 ### Whose machine it runs on **Open source** · Partly — The clients are open: the MCP server is published as free and open-source on GitHub, the Python and JavaScript SDKs and the benchmark harnesses are public repositories, while the search index and ranking service remain a hosted API at api.exa.ai. > Connect Claude, Cursor, VS Code and other AI tools to Exa's search, code search, and research capabilities via MCP. Free and open-source. > — https://exa.ai/mcp · Exa MCP Server hero paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 ### Building with it **SDK languages** · Yes — Official SDKs cover Python (exa-py, Python 3.9+) and TypeScript/JavaScript (exa-js); other languages must call the REST API or the OpenAPI spec directly. > The official Exa SDKs. Search the web, get page contents, and get answers with citations. > — https://exa.ai/docs/sdks/quickstart.md · SDK Quickstart, intro and Install section, checked 26 October 2026 **Tracing and evals** · Yes — Completed Agent runs return field-level grounding citations and a cost breakdown, stored run events can be listed or replayed as server-sent events, and per-key usage analytics are retrievable through the Team Management API. > Each run can return a natural-language answer, schema-validated JSON, field-level grounding, metadata, and a cost breakdown. You can retrieve completed runs later, list past runs, replay events, or continue from a previous run. > — https://exa.ai/docs/agent/quickstart.md · Exa Agent overview, third paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 ### What it costs to run **How it meters** · Yes — Billing is per request against a prepaid dollar credit balance, with no seats and no subscription: each endpoint has a base price per 1,000 requests, extra results and AI summaries billed on top. > Exa is pay-as-you-go. There is no subscription and no minimum spend: you load credits and are charged per request, at the rates below. > — https://exa.ai/pricing · Pricing page, opening paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 **Cost of one job** · Yes — One thousand Lite search requests cost $4 on the cheapest paid path, each covering up to ten results; extra results add $1 per 1,000 and an Agent research run runs from $0.012 to $1.00 at fixed effort. > `/search` (`lite`) | $4 / 1k requests | $1 / 1k results > — https://exa.ai/pricing · Search, Contents, Answer, and Monitors table, /search row, checked 26 October 2026 **Price per 1,000 requests** · Yes — $1 per 1,000 requests in contents, its cheapest mode. > `/contents` | $1 / 1k pages, per content type | — | $1 / 1k pages > — https://exa.ai/pricing · Search, Contents, Answer, and Monitors table, /contents row, checked 26 October 2026 **Free credit** · Yes — $10 of free usage, a month. > Every new team starts on the Free tier with $10 in credits, available in full the day you sign up regardless of the date. Your free balance then resets to $10 on the first day of every calendar month. > — https://exa.ai/docs/admin/billing.md · Free tier credits section, checked 26 October 2026 **Free tier** · Yes — Every new team gets $10 of credits that reset monthly plus a one-time $10 onboarding bonus, with no payment method and no sales call required, and the free tier reaches all API endpoints except Exa Snapshot. > New accounts receive $10 in free credits every month, plus a one-time $10 bonus for completing onboarding. No payment method is required, and the free tier includes access to all API endpoints. > — https://exa.ai/llms.txt · Start for free paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 **MCP server** · Yes — Exa publishes a hosted MCP server at mcp.exa.ai/mcp plus an open-source implementation, and the hosted endpoint can be tried without an API key at limited usage, so another agent can query Exa directly from Claude, Cursor or VS Code. > Connect Exa search, code search, content retrieval, and research tools to Claude, Cursor, Codex, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible clients. The hosted MCP server can be tried without an API key at limited usage levels. > — https://exa.ai/llms.txt · MCP Server section, checked 26 October 2026 ### Buying it for a team **A company can buy it** · Yes — An organisation buys as a team: teams hold the credit balance, plan and API keys, owners and managers invite members, and Enterprise adds postpaid invoice billing and several teams grouped under one organisation. > Exa organizes usage, billing, and API keys into teams. To set up your company or organization on Exa, create a team and invite your colleagues to it. > — https://exa.ai/docs/admin/team-management.md · Managing Your Team, opening paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 **Seat model** · No — There is no per-seat charge and no seat floor or ceiling documented: members are invited freely and the team's shared credit balance is what gets consumed, so cost tracks requests rather than headcount. > Everyone on a team shares its credit balance, plan, and API keys. > — https://exa.ai/docs/admin/team-management.md · Managing Your Team, opening paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 **Pooled budget** · Yes — One prepaid balance per team funds every member and every API key, rate limits apply to the team as a whole, and credits must be topped up team by team rather than per user. > Credits belong to a team, so top up each team separately. > — https://exa.ai/docs/admin/team-management.md · Top up a team's balance section, checked 26 October 2026 **Admin controls** · Partly — Admins control spend and throughput rather than behaviour: a key can be given a lower rate limit and a budget that returns 402 when reached, invites carry roles, but no policy engine over what the agent may retrieve is documented. > You can give an individual key a lower limit from the API Keys page, but its traffic still counts toward the team limit. > — https://exa.ai/docs/admin/billing.md · Rate limits section, first paragraph, checked 26 October 2026 **Single sign-on** · Partly — Single sign-on is an Enterprise arrangement rather than a self-serve setting: Exa says Enterprise plans offer SSO and SCIM directory sync across several teams grouped in an organisation, and tells buyers to contact support to set it up. > Enterprise customers can also group several teams under an Exa organization with SSO and directory sync. Contact support@exa.ai to set one up. > — https://exa.ai/docs/admin/team-management.md · Top up a team's balance section, closing note, checked 26 October 2026 ### What happens to your code **Opt out of training** · Partly — Zero Data Retention, under which queries and results are neither stored nor trained on, is enabled per team on Enterprise plans only and does not cover Websets; no opt-out switch exists on the free or pay-as-you-go tiers. > Zero Data Retention (ZDR) is available on Enterprise plans and enabled per team. > — https://exa.ai/docs/admin/security/zero-data-retention.md · Zero Data Retention, opening line, checked 26 October 2026 **Data residency** · Partly — Region is an Enterprise configuration item rather than a published choice of jurisdictions, and separately Exa blocks API access from sanctioned countries; no list of available storage regions is given. > Configure throughput, regions, and retrieval behavior for your workload. > — https://exa.ai/enterprise · Enterprise-ready from day one, Capacity and control card, checked 26 October 2026 **Getting out** · Partly — Results come back as data you keep and Agent runs can be listed, retrieved and deleted through the API, but purchased credit is a prepaid balance and free credits expire monthly without carrying over, and no refund path is offered. > The grant does not accumulate: unused free credits from one month do not carry into the next, so this grant never holds more than $10 at a time. > — https://exa.ai/docs/admin/billing.md · Free tier credits section, checked 26 October 2026 **Certifications** · Yes — Exa states it is SOC 2 Type II audited and honours GDPR and CCPA rights, with HIPAA and a BAA offered on Enterprise plans; reports and the DPA are requested through its Trust Center. ISO 27001 is not claimed on the pages read. > Yes. Exa is SOC 2 Type II audited and honors GDPR and CCPA data-subject rights. Enterprise plans offer zero data retention, HIPAA with a BAA, SSO and SCIM, and a custom MSA and DPA. > — https://exa.ai/enterprise · Common questions, "Is Exa SOC 2 compliant, and does it retain our data?", checked 26 October 2026 ## Exa price and terms **Terms** - Free plan: Yes — $10 in credits available the day you sign up, resetting to $10 on the first of each calendar month and not accumulating, plus a one-time $10 onboarding bonus that does not expire; no payment method required; 10 QPS and 50 active Agent runs; Exa Snapshot excluded. **What needs a higher plan** - Enterprise: Single sign-on, Opt out of training, Data residency ## For AI agents - MCP server: Yes Pricing page as we captured it: https://theagentsindex.com/img/1920/screenshots/exa/pricing.webp, captured 28 October 2026 Read on https://exa.ai/pricing, 26 October 2026. ## Exa alternatives - [ProofFetch](https://theagentsindex.com/prooffetch) · Free plan, then $5 per pack of 500 extractions: Paid web extraction API returning cited paragraphs, SHA-256 receipts and prompt-injection indicators. - [Apify](https://theagentsindex.com/apify) · Free plan, then $19 a month: Marketplace and cloud platform of ready-to-run web scraping and automation tools, callable over API or MCP. - [Bright Data](https://theagentsindex.com/bright-data) · Free plan, then $1.50 per 1000 requests: Web unlocking, SERP and 1,200+ pre-built scrapers on a 400M-IP proxy network, billed per successful record. - [Oxylabs](https://theagentsindex.com/oxylabs) · From $30 a month: Live web search, page scraping and a cloud browser on one 177M-IP proxy network, with MCP servers for agents. All 4 publish a price. [All 4 alternatives](https://theagentsindex.com/exa/alternatives/) ## Questions about Exa ### How much does Exa cost? Exa is free to use. From exa.ai/pricing, checked 26 October 2026. ### Does Exa have an API or an MCP server? It has an MCP server. ### Is Exa open source, and can you host it yourself? Part of it is open source. ### What have we checked on Exa? 20 facts, under these headings: How much it does unattended, whose machine it runs on, building with it, what it costs to run, buying it for a team, what happens to your code. ### How do we check Exa? We hold 20 facts on Exa, quoted from 9 pages. Facts and price last checked 26 October 2026. How we check every listing: https://theagentsindex.com/methodology/ ## Sources and changes Last changed 28 October 2026 **Sources on exa.ai** (9) - https://exa.ai/pricing, read 26 October 2026 - https://exa.ai/docs/admin/team-management.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://exa.ai/docs/admin/billing.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://exa.ai/docs/agent/quickstart.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://exa.ai/enterprise, read 26 October 2026 - https://exa.ai/llms.txt, read 26 October 2026 - https://exa.ai/docs/admin/security/zero-data-retention.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://exa.ai/docs/sdks/quickstart.md, read 26 October 2026 - https://exa.ai/mcp, read 26 October 2026 ## Is this yours? AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude opened The Agents Index pages 2,746 times in September. Claim Exa: https://theagentsindex.com/claim/exa Report an error if a fact is wrong: hello@theagentsindex.com, subject "Report an error: Exa (exa)".