Exa
AI-powered web search API built for LLMs and AI agents
Founded
2021
Starting Price
$0
Category
Developer Tools
Last updated April 27, 2026
About Exa
Exa (formerly Metaphor) is a search engine and API designed specifically for AI applications. It uses embeddings-based neural search to retrieve high-quality, semantically relevant web content, enabling developers to ground LLM outputs in accurate, up-to-date information from across the web.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Neural search finds deep, niche content that traditional search engines miss
- Exa Instant delivers sub-200ms response times ideal for real-time AI agents
- Clean content retrieval eliminates the need for complex web scraping pipelines
- Purpose-built for LLM and AI agent integration with developer-friendly APIs
- Websets feature enables powerful lead generation and market research at scale
Key Features
Neural Search API
Embeddings-based semantic search that understands meaning, not just keywords, returning highly relevant results from across the web
Exa Instant
Sub-200ms search engine optimized for real-time agentic workflows, up to 15x faster than competitors
Content Retrieval
Returns clean, parsed HTML content from search results without the complexity of web scraping
Find Similar
Discover pages semantically similar to a given URL, useful for competitive analysis and content discovery
Answer Endpoint
Get direct answers to questions grounded in real web sources with citations
Research Automation
Automates in-depth web research with iterative querying, returning structured JSON results clustered by topic
Websets
Build and enrich datasets about people, companies, or entities at scale for sales prospecting and market research
Pricing
Free
$0
- $10 in free credits
- Neural search API access
- Content retrieval
- Find similar
- Community support
Best For
AI Agent Web Access
Give AI agents and chatbots real-time access to web information for grounded, accurate responses
Research Automation
Automate in-depth research workflows that gather, synthesize, and cite information from across the web
Lead Generation & Prospecting
Use Websets to build enriched datasets of companies and contacts matching specific criteria at scale
RAG Pipeline Integration
Feed retrieval-augmented generation systems with relevant, up-to-date web content for knowledge-intensive tasks
