Exa
One API to search the entire web like an AI — the building block for teams who want to build their own data enrichment pipeline
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The Verdict
“Exa is the best semantic search API available for developers building AI-powered GTM workflows. Its accuracy significantly outperforms alternatives, but it's purely a developer tool — there's no self-serve UI for sales reps.”
Best For
Technical GTM teams and developers building custom AI-powered data enrichment, research, or prospecting tools
Not Great For
Non-technical sales teams — this is an API, not a product. Use Clay or Apollo if you want something you can click.
Overview
Exa is an AI-powered web search API that provides high-quality search across companies, people, code, and more. It offers semantic search, content extraction, and research capabilities — used by AI agents and developers to ground LLMs in real-world web data.
AI developers, AI agent builders, data engineers, GTM engineers
all sizes
Capabilities
Key Features
- Semantic web search API
- Company and people search
- Content extraction (text, highlights, summaries)
- Research agent endpoint
- Domain/location/category filters
- Real-time index updated every minute
- 5 API endpoints (search, contents, answer, research, find similar)
Benefits
- Highest accuracy for company and people search (62-63%)
- Ground AI agents in real-world web data
- One API replaces multiple data sources
- Index updated every minute for freshness
Pros & Cons
Pros
- +Best-in-class search accuracy
- +Versatile API with multiple endpoints
- +SOC 2 Type II compliant
- +Startup and education discounts
Cons
- -Developer-only — no UI for non-technical users
- -Costs can add up at high volume
- -No direct CRM integration
- -Requires coding to use
Outbound Use Cases
Financials & Scale
| Plan | Price | Limits | Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | Usage-based | $10 free credits | Search: $5/1K requests (1-25 results), Contents: $1/1K pages (text/highlights/summary), Answer: $5/1K answers, Research: $5/1K tasks, SOC 2 Type II |
| Custom/Enterprise | Custom | Up to 1,000 results per search, custom rate limits | Volume discounts, SLAs and MSAs, Zero data retention, Single sign-on, 1:1 onboarding |
Exa offers API credits — free tier for testing, paid plans scale with usage. SerpAPI is $50-250/mo. Tavily has a free tier. This is developer infrastructure, not a sales tool — compare it to building blocks, not finished products.
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Competitive Landscape
Technical Stack
Data Intelligence
Head-to-Head Comparisons
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