# Exa review (2026): is the free plan enough? > Web search API built for AI agents and applications Checked Nov 12, 2026 ยท graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA. Exa is a search API that returns web results, page contents and agent-run research for AI applications. Its index includes web, people, company and scholarly-works data. Developers start on a free monthly credit allowance and then pay per request. - **Category:** AI Research Tools - **Made by:** Exa Labs Inc. - **Website:** https://exa.ai - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Not for you if you want an app to read or take notes in, as it's an API. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 12, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 12, 2026, Exa has a free plan. - **Pricing model:** Free plan - **Free plan:** Starter: $10 in credits every month plus a $10 onboarding bonus, no payment method required. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Starter | $0 | $10 of credits each month, access to all endpoints, 10 search queries per second and 50 agent concurrency. | | Enterprise | Custom | Zero data retention, custom MSA and DPA, SSO and SCIM, SLAs and custom indexes, sold through sales. | Read from https://exa.ai/pricing on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Exa before buying. ## Key features - **Search API:** Returns web results with page text and highlights, with latency settings from about 450 ms to 10 seconds and categories such as news, companies, research papers and people. - **Contents API:** Fetches full page contents or token-efficient highlights for use as model context, with configurable live-crawl policies. - **Agent API:** Runs asynchronous deep-research tasks that return structured output with citations. - **Monitors API:** Runs searches on a schedule and sends updates by webhook. - **Agent tooling:** The Starter plan lists an MCP server, a Claude connector, a ChatGPT plugin and more than 50 integrations. ## Good for - Developers adding web search to an AI agent or chatbot - Teams that want scholarly and company data behind one API - Builders who want to start free before paying per request ## Worth knowing - The free Starter allowance is $10 of credits per month; past that, the Developer plan bills by usage with no fixed monthly price. - Per-request prices: search from $4 per 1,000 requests, contents $1 per 1,000 pages, monitors $2 per 1,000 requests, agent runs $0.012 to $1.00 each. - Zero data retention is an Enterprise option with a $12,000 annual commitment in API credits. - It is an API for developers, not a reading or note-taking app; it has no desktop or mobile apps. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.2 out of 4**, graded Nov 12, 2026. Exa is a web search API for developers building AI agents, with search, page contents, monitors and agent endpoints. The free Starter gives $10 in credits a month, but past that you pay per request, so it's a developer product with no reading or note-taking app. - **Value for money: C.** No fixed monthly price: search from $4 per 1,000 requests, contents $1 per 1,000 pages and agent runs $0.012 to $1.00 each. It's a different kind of thing from a reading app, so it sits at C, and the bill depends on usage. - **Free plan and trial: B.** The Starter plan is $10 of credits every month plus a $10 onboarding bonus, with no payment method needed. A solo developer testing can live on that. - **Features: C.** Search, Contents, Agent and Monitors APIs plus agent tooling. A developer building block rather than a research tool, and zero data retention needs a $12,000 annual Enterprise commitment. - **Ease of use: D.** No store rating on record. You need code, an API key and a client to use it, so it's a D. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web API with Claude, ChatGPT and MCP hooks. No desktop or mobile apps, as the listing says. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Exa's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among AI research tools - Exa's GPA of 2.2 is higher than 7 of the 49 other AI research tools we grade, and level with 11. - It stands best on free plan and trial (B, above 36 of 49) and worst on ease of use (D, above 0). The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/ai-research ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Exa you would be making a search engine with an AI model behind it. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. That makes this kind of software worth paying for, not this one in particular: 31 of the 49 other AI research tools grade higher. - You could not: A search engine with an AI model behind it. - You could not: A library of papers and sources to search. - You could not: An AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it. - You could not: It plugs into other products, Claude, ChatGPT and MCP among them, and has an API. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with Claude, ChatGPT, MCP **Tags:** AI search, Public API, Research, AI agents ## Alternatives - [Tavily](https://toolgpa.com/tools/tavily): Web search, extract and crawl API built for AI agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/exa-vs-tavily) - [Perplexity](https://toolgpa.com/tools/perplexity): AI search assistant that answers questions with cited sources. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/exa-vs-perplexity) - [Serper](https://toolgpa.com/tools/serper): Google search results API sold in prepaid credit packs. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/exa-vs-serper) - [Brave Search API](https://toolgpa.com/tools/brave-search-api): Web search API from Brave's own index, built for AI agents and apps. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/brave-search-api-vs-exa) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026: - https://exa.ai/pricing - https://exa.ai Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/exa Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).