Exa

license

Proprietary(API-only)

source

closed(neural search models + index proprietary

managed

cloud SaaS with API keys, usage-based pricing

Exa is sold only as a hosted API, and the search models and index behind it are not published in any form. Only the client libraries are public, under the MIT license, so nothing that runs the search can be self-hosted.

• https://exa.ai/about recorded 2026-09-28

  The about page describes a hosted search product reached through "Pricing", "Contact sales" and "Sign up" ("We power search for Cursor, Cognition, HubSpot, OpenRouter, Monday.com and over 400,000 developers."). Searched the body for self-host, on-prem, open source, license and download: none, so no source or self-hostable build is offered.

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/exa-labs/exa-py/master/LICENSE recorded 2026-09-28

  The MIT License (MIT)

Exa's own about page names the customers it serves, including Cursor, Cognition, HubSpot, OpenRouter and Monday.com, and states its developer count directly. No independently published request, query or revenue figure exists, so that vendor-stated count is what the reach here reflects.

• https://exa.ai/about recorded 2026-10-08

  "search for Cursor, Cognition, HubSpot, OpenRouter, Monday.com and over 400,000 developers". No request, query or revenue figure is published.

Exa's `/search` endpoint returns page text, highlights or a schema-shaped summary through its `contents` block, combining discovery and content extraction in one call, level with Firecrawl. Its Answer endpoint does compose a cited response, but it is priced and documented separately from Search ($5 against $7 per 1,000 requests), the same separation as Parallel's Responses API and Brave's Answers.

• https://docs.exa.ai/reference/search recorded 2026-09-17

  The Exa API reference: Search, Contents, Agent, Monitors, Answer, Websets and Batch under one navigation. The `/search` request body carries a `contents` object with `text`, `highlights` and a `summary` with a JSON schema.

• https://exa.ai/pricing recorded 2026-09-17

  Exa's endpoint price table, which is what settles the product boundary: Search $7, Deep Search $12, Deep-Reasoning Search $15, Contents $1 per 1,000 pages, Monitors $15, Answer $5 - each endpoint priced separately per 1,000 requests.