Exa — AI-Native Search API for Agent Pipelines

What is Exa?

Exa is a search engine built specifically for AI applications. Unlike Google (designed for humans clicking links), Exa uses neural search to understand query meaning and returns clean, structured content — full text, not just URLs. This makes it ideal for RAG pipelines, research agents, and any AI workflow that needs high-quality web knowledge.

Answer-Ready: Exa is an AI-native search API using neural search. Returns clean content (not links) with semantic understanding. Built for RAG pipelines and AI agents. Supports search, similarity finding, and content extraction. MCP server available. Used by leading AI companies.

Best for: AI agents needing web search with clean content extraction. Works with: Any LLM framework, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Claude Code via MCP. Setup time: Under 2 minutes.

Core Features

1. Semantic Search

# Understands meaning, not just keyword matching
results = exa.search(
    "papers about attention mechanisms in transformers",
    num_results=10,
    type="neural",  # or "keyword" for traditional search
)

2. Search + Contents (One Call)

# Get search results with full text content
results = exa.search_and_contents(
    "Claude Code tips and tricks",
    num_results=5,
    text={"max_characters": 3000},  # Full text extraction
    highlights=True,                 # Key excerpts
)

3. Find Similar

# Find pages similar to a given URL
results = exa.find_similar_and_contents(
    "https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code",
    num_results=5,
    text=True,
)

4. Content Extraction Only

# Extract content from known URLs
contents = exa.get_contents(
    ["https://example.com/article1", "https://example.com/article2"],
    text=True,
)

5. Filtering

results = exa.search(
    "AI coding tools",
    num_results=10,
    start_published_date="2026-01-01",
    include_domains=["github.com", "arxiv.org"],
    exclude_domains=["reddit.com"],
    category="research paper",
)

Exa vs Google/Tavily/Brave

MCP Integration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "exa": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "exa-mcp-server"],
      "env": { "EXA_API_KEY": "..." }
    }
  }
}

FAQ

Q: How is it different from Tavily? A: Exa uses proprietary neural search (trained embeddings), while Tavily wraps traditional search with AI extraction. Exa's "find similar" feature is unique.

Q: How much does it cost? A: Free tier available with limited searches. Paid plans from $5/month.

Q: Can Claude Code use it? A: Yes, via the Exa MCP server or direct API calls in scripts.