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Exa

Neural web search API: meaning-based ranking over Exa's own web index.

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About

Exa (formerly Metaphor) runs its own web index and ranks pages by meaning instead of keywords, which makes it strong for research questions and find-similar discovery where keyword engines miss. The API covers /search, /contents, /answer, and /find-similar, with contents bundled into search so there is no second hop for page text.

Pricing is tiered by latency: instant $4/1k, fast/auto $7/1k, deep $12-15/1k requests, each including up to 10 results. New accounts get $20 in credits plus $10 every month, and there is a hosted MCP server.

Honest limits: results past 10 are billed per-result ($1/1k each), and separate meters for depth, results, and content types make cost forecasting fiddlier than Tavily's single-credit model.

What it can do

  • Neural semantic web search
  • Search + contents in one call
  • Find-similar URL discovery
  • Cited answer synthesis endpoint
  • Hosted MCP server

Setup

  1. Create an account at exa.ai and grab an API key.
  2. Install the SDK: pip install exa-py or npm install exa-js.
  3. Call client.search_and_contents() for neural search with page text.
  4. Add the hosted MCP server to your agent config for tool-use access.

Prerequisites

Exa account and API key; Python or Node runtime.

Use cases

dataresearchagents

Works with

mcpGeneric API

Trust score — 7/10

/10 trustMetrics-checked

Scored 7/10 (metrics tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: Own neural web index, not a SERP wrapper; $10/month recurring free credits plus $20 signup; Latency-tiered pricing makes cost forecasting fiddly. License: Proprietary API.

How the trust score is built

Full methodology →
Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
8.0/10
Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
8.0/10
Openness · license + docs
4.0/10
Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
7.0/10
  • · Own neural web index, not a SERP wrapper
  • · $10/month recurring free credits plus $20 signup
  • · Latency-tiered pricing makes cost forecasting fiddly

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.