Exa highlights

The switch is one line

Your code keeps its body, contents.highlights included, and its parser. The address changes, and the key.

# Before: Exa, $4 per 1,000 on lite and $7 on auto
curl -X POST https://api.exa.ai/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "latest chip export rules", "numResults": 5, "contents": {"highlights": true, "text": {"maxCharacters": 1000}}}'

# After: SpecStream, $1 per 1,000, each page read live
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/exa/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "latest chip export rules", "numResults": 5, "contents": {"highlights": true, "text": {"maxCharacters": 1000}}}'

Each result comes back with id, url, title and publishedDate, highlights as a list and text cut to the 1,000 characters the body asks for. searchTime and costDollars.total close the reply, as on Exa.

Highlights and text in one price of $1 per 1,000

Exa includes text and highlights for the first 10 results of a search that costs $4 per 1,000 requests on lite and $7 on auto, and each result above 10 adds $1 per 1,000. On /contents each content type is billed, so 100,000 pages with text and highlights cost $200. SpecStream charges $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results with both fields in that price, and numResults: 100 costs $0.0118.

A passage sized for the context window

Highlights exist to keep search results small in an agent's context. Exa reports that highlights cut search tokens by 5x on average against full text. On SpecStream the same control is one number: contents.text.maxCharacters. text starts from the part of the page closest to your query, in the page's order, one list item, paragraph or table row a line, and stops at the limit you set. With no limit it runs to about 3,500 characters.

Read from the live page

Exa's lite type serves page content from its cache and never fetches a page live. SpecStream reads each page at the moment of your call, whichever type you send. A result whose page is not read in time keeps its snippet in text, so no result is dropped.

A Dynamic Highlights request runs as it is

Dynamic Highlights is a research preview on Exa: dynamic: true inside contents.highlights, with the header Exa-Beta: dynamic-highlights-2026-08-28. SpecStream's route accepts the object and the header, and answers in the same results[].highlights shape, so code written for the preview needs no second path.

The most accurate web search API in the world

On SimpleQA Verified the SpecStream Search API scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official questions, 978 of them correct. On WideSearch it scores 64.0 item F1 and 43.4 row F1 on all 200 official tasks. The Extract API scores 0.908 F1 on WCXB. Every score and its method is on the benchmarks page.

How fast the route answers

The fast search behind the Exa route had a median of 0.82 seconds at one search a second and 1.07 seconds at 20 searches a second, measured on production on November 9, 2026, with 718 of 720 searches answered. There is no limit per key and no daily limit.

Pages, documents and rows on the same key

POST /exa/contents answers Exa's Contents call, and exa.get_contents(urls) works with the same base_url: up to 20 pages a call, each at the Extract API's $0.80 per 1,000 pages, PDF, Word and Excel included. When you need every match on the web in place of a results page, Deep Search returns structured rows at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, under a maximum you approve before it runs.

Tavily

A search API for agents, billed in credits: $0.008 a credit pay as you go, 1 credit for a basic search and 2 for an advanced one, with 1,000 free credits a month. SpecStream answers Tavily's call too, at https://api.specstream.ai/tavily/search, for $0.001 a search.

Brave Search API

A search API on Brave's own index. Search costs $5 per 1,000 requests, with $5 in free credits every month and 50 queries per second. SpecStream answers Brave's /res/v1/web/search call on the same path, at $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results.

Parallel

Separate Search, Extract, Task, FindAll and Monitor APIs, each priced by its own unit. Search starts at $1 per 1,000 requests. On SpecStream one request in plain words covers the search, the reading and the finished rows, under a maximum you approve.

Firecrawl

Search, Scrape and Crawl endpoints billed in credits. The Hobby plan is $19 a month, and a search costs 2 credits per 10 results. SpecStream bills a search at $0.001 and a page read at $0.0008, and a page with no text is not charged.