exa review
TestedFast, intelligent web search and web crawling. New mcp tool: Exa-code is a context tool for coding · exa directory profile
Fastest in the suite — perfect on everything it supports
Exa passed all 7 of its applicable tasks with a 221 ms median tool-call latency and a 462 ms 95th percentile — the fastest and by far the most consistent latency profile in the run. It also cleared the JavaScript-rendered scrape that stopped three of the five services. Structured JSON extraction is not offered, so that task is excluded from its score rather than counted against it.
Measured strengths
- Every single task completed in under 600 ms — no other service came close to that consistency
- Passed the JavaScript-rendered scrape (228 ms) that tavily, brightdata, and apify failed in the same run
- Tightest tail latency of the run: 462 ms at p95 vs 1.9 s for the next best
- Free tier of 20,000 requests/month (exa.ai/pricing, checked 2026-07-17)
Measured caveats
- No structured-extraction task type — if you need schema-shaped JSON output from pages, this suite found only one service that does it
- Fetching page content is priced separately from search (see pricing)
Pricing
Pay-as-you-go (exa.ai/pricing, checked 2026-07-17): search $7 per 1,000 requests; page contents $1 per 1,000 pages; free tier 20,000 requests/month. Our cost figure uses the search rate as a conservative upper bound.
Benchmark results
Run 20260717T113200Z-7113 · promoted 2026-07-17 · harness 88581d0 · how these numbers are produced
- Success rate
- 100% (7 applicable tasks)
- Latency p50 / p95
- 221 ms / 462 ms
- Cost per task (estimated)
- ~$0.007 (1 requests)
Capability coverage
-
scrape_markdown: supported -
web_search: supported -
structured_extract: not offered (excluded from scoring)
Task-by-task outcomes
| Task | Outcome | Latency |
|---|---|---|
| Scrape a minimal static page | passed | 556 ms |
| Scrape a long-form encyclopedia article | passed | 221 ms |
| Scrape a technical documentation page | passed | 242 ms |
| Scrape a JavaScript-rendered page | passed | 228 ms |
| Known-answer search (historically stable fact) | passed | 217 ms |
| Known-answer search (protocol constant) | passed | 212 ms |
| Navigational search for a canonical domain | passed | 207 ms |
| Extract a titled summary as structured JSON | not supported | — |