Exa API review

The actions you pay for, as Exa prices them.

US dollars, as Exa's pricing page shows them on 25 Oct 2026. Monthly and annual billing are shown apart.

Free tier DOCS: $10 credits available the day you sign up, reset to $10 on the 1st of each month (no rollover, first team only), plus a one-time $10 bonus for completing dashboard onboarding; 'No payment method required'. LIVE APP: plan reads 'Free $10 credits per month' but balance is $0.00 with banner 'Your free credits are pending payment verification. Add a non-prepaid payment method that hasn't been used to unlock another team's credits.' The live app wins for what a new user actually gets: in practice the free credits need a card. Free tier excludes Exa Snapshot.

Team-wide QPS across all keys (docs): /search, /answer, /chat/completions 10 QPS; deep-lite/deep/deep-reasoning 5 QPS; /contents 100 QPS; /agent/runs and /responses 5 QPS + 50 active runs (each run start counts as 2 requests; polling GETs free); /websets/* 20 QPS.

Exa uses API key. The steps below follow Exa's own docs.

1. Create a Exa account. The Free plan includes API access.
2. Create at dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys. Creating a key needs no card (docs), but on a new account the free credits stay at $0.00 'pending payment verification' until a non-prepaid card not used by another Exa team is added. Team Management API (admin-api.exa.ai) uses a separate service key from the 'Service keys' tab, enabled per team on request
3. Send it with every request: header: x-api-key: <key> or Authorization: Bearer <key> (core spec securitySchemes apiKey + bearer); Websets and Team Management specs declare x-api-key only.
4. Make a first call: Web search (types: lite, auto, fast/instant legacy, deep-lite, deep, deep-reasoning); optional contents, categories company/people/news/etc. Keep the key in an environment variable, never in the command.
   Copy

   curl -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/search" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXA_API_KEY" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{}'

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Tavily

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Four things to settle first, each read off Exa's own pages.

• Confirm the API is on your planThe Free plan includes API access. Free tier: DOCS: $10 credits available the day you sign up, reset to $10 on the 1st of each month (no rollover, first team only), plus a one-time $10….
• Keep the key out of your codeAPI key. It is sent as: header: x-api-key: <key> or Authorization: Bearer <key> (core spec securitySchemes apiKey + bearer); Websets and Team Management specs declare x-api-key only.
• Design around the rate limitTeam-wide QPS across all keys (docs): /search, /answer, /chat/completions 10 QPS; deep-lite/deep/deep-reasoning 5 QPS; /contents 100 QPS; /agent/runs and /responses 5 QPS + 50 active runs (each run start counts as 2 requests; polling GETs free); /websets/* 20 QPS.
• Know the catch before you scaleWebsets API needs a separate paid Websets plan; Websets credits are separate from API credits and their rates are not public.