Exa is a search API built for AI agents rather than humans — it returns clean, embedding-ranked results (and optionally full page contents) instead of a page of blue links, which is why it's become a common "web search" tool for agentic RAG in 2026. Pricing is per request rather than per token, and it's tiered by how much work each endpoint does. Here's what it costs and how to get your key.
| Endpoint | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Search (with contents) most used | $7 / 1,000 requests | Standard neural search + snippets |
| Deep Search / Reasoning | $12–15 / 1,000 | Multi-step research queries |
| Contents (standalone) | $1 / 1,000 pages | Fetching full text for URLs you already have |
| Monitors | $15 / 1,000 | Scheduled recurring search jobs |
| Agent (effort-based) | $0.025–$2.00 / task | Autonomous multi-tool agent runs |
→ Estimate a full agent stack with the AI agent cost calculator or compare against the web search tool cost calculator for built-in provider search (OpenAI/Gemini grounding).
Yes — new accounts get $10 in free credits after onboarding (roughly 1,400 standard search requests), and once you've added a payment method you get another $7 free every calendar month going forward. There's no separate perpetual free plan below that — once credits run out, requests bill per-endpoint at the rates above.
1. Go to dashboard.exa.ai and sign up (email or GitHub/Google).
2. Verify your email — onboarding credits land automatically.
3. Open the API Keys tab and generate a new key; copy it once.
4. Add a payment method under Billing to unlock the recurring $7/month free credit and remove rate caps.
Test it with a simple request:
At $7 per 1,000 requests, an agent making one search call per user session costs about $0.007/session before any other tool or LLM cost — cheap per call, but it adds up fast in a loop that searches repeatedly per task. Use the AI agent cost calculator to model total per-task cost across search + LLM + other tool calls together.
Tavily is Exa's closest direct competitor and the other default "agent search" tool most frameworks ship with — compare both before committing since pricing and result quality differ by query type. For raw web search without agent-specific ranking, Brave Search and SerpAPI are typically cheaper per call but return standard SERPs rather than embedding-ranked, agent-formatted results.
Exa is built specifically for LLM/agent consumption — results are semantically (embedding) ranked rather than keyword-matched, and it can return clean extracted page text alongside the links so an agent doesn't need a separate scraping step.
Yes — $10 onboarding credit plus $7/month once a payment method is on file, no perpetual zero-cost plan beyond that.
Sign up at dashboard.exa.ai, verify your email, and generate a key from the API Keys tab.
It depends on the endpoint and query complexity — Exa's standard Search is priced per 1,000 requests while Tavily uses its own credit model, so the cheaper option shifts with your specific query mix. Test both against your real workload before committing.
Not affiliated with Exa. Prices are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.