Exa
Neural web search API with a news category, built for LLM apps
Founded: 2021 | San Francisco, USA | Team: 51–200
Full article textWeb search indexLLM/agent tooling
What is Exa?
Exa Labs was founded in 2021 in San Francisco by Will Bryk and Jeff Wang under the name Metaphor, and raised an $85 million Series B led by Benchmark in September 2025. It runs its own embeddings-based web index. A request can be narrowed to the news category and can return cleaned page contents in the same call. As of 2026 the Search endpoint is listed at $7 per 1,000 requests with contents for the first 10 results included, and new accounts get $20 in credit. Exa is a general web search engine first, so small regional outlets and strict publication-date filters are weaker spots than in dedicated news APIs.
Typical uses: AI & LLM apps, Research & academia. What sets it apart: Meaning-based search finds relevant pages even when the keywords differ.
What does the Exa API include?
REST APIJSONPython SDKNode.js SDKMCP server
| Capability |
|---|
| Full article text |
| Web search index |
| LLM/agent tooling |
Exa pricing
Short answer: the pricing model is pay per request; free monthly credit. Entry price: $7 per 1,000 searches.
| Access model | What it means |
|---|---|
| Free tier | Permanent free allowance, usually with request, history or commercial-use limits |
| Pay-as-you-go | Billed per request or credit, with no monthly minimum |
| Enterprise contract | Negotiated licence covering volume, rights and SLA |
API prices and quotas change often. Check Exa's own pricing page before you commit, and confirm that your use is covered by the licence.
Exa pros and cons
| Advantages | Things to consider |
|---|---|
| +Semantic queries surface coverage that keyword APIs miss | -It is a search engine without a source taxonomy, sentiment or story clustering |
| +Search results and page contents come back in one call, which keeps RAG code short | -Date filters rely on crawl and publish metadata that can be imprecise |
| +Official MCP server and SDKs for Python and TypeScript | -Per-request costs climb fast for high-volume monitoring |
| +No monthly minimum on pay-per-request pricing |
Exa vs alternatives
How Exa compares to the other top News APIs.
| API | Best for | Key difference | Rating | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NewsCatcher | AI products and monitoring tools needing enriched, deduplicated... | Articles arrive already summarised, clustered and geotagged, so there is less post-processing on your side | 4.7 | Full comparison |
| Perigon | Startups wanting enriched news with transparent tiers. | Published plans from $25 with enrichment and saved-query monitors included | 4.5 | Full comparison |
| Webz.io | Data teams needing deep archives and broad source... | Largest claimed source count on this list and history going back to 2008 | 4.4 | Full comparison |
| Dow Jones Factiva | Enterprises needing licensed premium news for AI or... | Publisher-cleared rights to use paywalled premium content in generative-AI products | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| NewsData.io | Small teams wanting wide country coverage on a... | Daily free credits plus filters for 206 countries and 89 languages | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) | Multilingual event tracking for analysts and research teams. | Merges articles about the same real-world event across languages into one event record | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| LexisNexis Nexis Data+ | Legal, compliance and research teams needing licensed news... | Licensed news, legal filings, patents and sanctions data under one contract | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Opoint | Monitoring platforms and AML teams needing non-English coverage. | Built as a wholesale feed with heavy non-English and local coverage | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| GNews | Indie developers needing affordable commercial news access. | Two simple endpoints with commercial rights from €49.99 a month | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| GDELT Project | Researchers and data scientists with no budget. | Free global coverage with 15-minute updates and BigQuery access | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| Tavily | Agent developers wanting news results in one tool... | Prompt-ready extracted content, with integrations for LangChain and LlamaIndex | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.org | Developers who want the most documented, familiar news... | More tutorials and community libraries than any other news API, which shortens learning time | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| World News API | Small apps wanting sentiment and geo filters at... | Location-radius and sentiment filters from the $39 plan up | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| Quantexa News API (Aylien) | Existing Aylien users and Quantexa platform customers. | Mature entity, category and sentiment tagging inherited from Aylien's NLP work | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Brave Search API | Teams wanting an independent, non-Google news search index. | Its own crawler and index, independent of Google and Bing | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| AP Media API | Publishers and platforms licensing AP journalism. | Primary-source wire content with publishing rights from AP itself | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| RavenPack (Bigdata.com) | Quant funds and financial AI products. | Two decades of entity-level news sentiment built for trading signals | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| SerpApi Google News | Developers who specifically want Google News rankings. | Mirrors Google News results and story groupings as JSON | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Reuters Connect | Media companies licensing Reuters wire content. | Reuters' own global reporting with publishing rights | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Mediastack | Hobby projects and low-volume apps on a tight... | Paid plans from $24.99 with commercial use and historical data | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Guardian Open Platform | Students, researchers and non-commercial apps. | Free full article text with editorial tags from a major publisher | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Diffbot | Teams building custom news collection from chosen sites. | Turns any article URL into clean structured data linked to a Knowledge Graph | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Benzinga | Brokerages and trading apps needing fast market headlines. | Original market newswire plus ratings and earnings events in one feed | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| Marketaux | Fintech side projects needing ticker-tagged news cheaply. | Per-entity sentiment scores on every article, even on the free plan | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| Finnhub | Developers who need market data and news from... | Company news bundled with quotes, fundamentals and estimates | 3.6 | Full comparison |
| TheNewsAPI | Personal projects that need a cheap general feed. | Possibly the cheapest paid tier among general news APIs, if third-party pricing is current | 3.6 | Full comparison |
| NYT Developer APIs | Historians and students researching Times coverage. | Searchable metadata for the full Times archive since 1851 | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| APITube | Developers willing to trial a newer, feature-rich API. | Entity and sentiment filters offered on lower tiers | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| Currents API | Students and hobbyists testing news features for free. | A free tier that developer roundups often single out as generous | 3.4 | Full comparison |
Exa FAQ
What is Exa?
Neural web search API with a news category, built for LLM apps
How much does Exa charge?
Pricing model: pay per request; free monthly credit. The cheapest paid access listed is $7 per 1,000 searches. Free access: yes, with limits.
Which formats and SDKs does Exa support?
Exa offers REST API, JSON, Python SDK, Node.js SDK, MCP server.
Is Exa right for enterprise?
Yes, Exa sells enterprise contracts. Main caveat: It is a search engine without a source taxonomy, sentiment or story clustering.
What are the best Exa alternatives?
The best alternatives to Exa depend on your use case. Top options are:
- NewsCatcher: articles arrive already summarised, clustered and geotagged, so there is less post-processing on your side
- Perigon: published plans from $25 with enrichment and saved-query monitors included
- Webz.io: largest claimed source count on this list and history going back to 2008
Compare Exa with other News APIs
Exa vs NewsCatcher Exa vs Perigon Exa vs Webz.io Exa vs Dow Jones Factiva Exa vs NewsData.io Exa vs NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) Exa vs LexisNexis Nexis Data+ Exa vs Opoint Exa vs GNews Exa vs GDELT Project Exa vs Tavily Exa vs NewsAPI.org Exa vs World News API Exa vs Quantexa News API (Aylien) Exa vs Brave Search API Exa vs AP Media API Exa vs RavenPack (Bigdata.com) Exa vs SerpApi Google News Exa vs Reuters Connect Exa vs Mediastack Exa vs Guardian Open Platform Exa vs Diffbot Exa vs Benzinga Exa vs Marketaux Exa vs Finnhub Exa vs TheNewsAPI Exa vs NYT Developer APIs Exa vs APITube Exa vs Currents API
Verify all details directly with Exa before making a decision.