Exa pricing
$4 to $15 per 1,000 searches, and $1 on SpecStream.
Exa charges per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results: $4 on lite, $7 on auto, the default, and $12 to $15 on deep types. Each result above 10 adds $1 per 1,000, and /contents costs $1 per 1,000 pages per content type.
SpecStream is the live web data engine for teams and agents. It answers Exa's own /search call at $1 per 1,000 searches on every fast type, and /contents at $0.80 per 1,000 pages.
New accounts get $10 of credit, no card. It covers 10,000 searches.
Every Exa price, and what SpecStream charges for the same job
| SpecStream | Exa | |
|---|---|---|
| Search, per 1,000 calls of up to 10 results | $1 on lite, auto and every other fast type, at https://api.specstream.ai/exa/search. $5 on deep-lite, deep and deep-reasoning, which run the default search | $4 on lite, $7 on auto, the default type, $12 on deep-lite and deep, and $15 on the legacy deep-reasoning |
| More than 10 results | Each started block of 10 more adds $0.0012, so numResults: 100 costs $0.0118 a call | $1 per 1,000 results above 10, so numResults: 100 on auto costs $0.097 a call |
| Page text with the search | contents.text gives each result the text of its page closest to the query, up to about 3,500 characters, in the price of the search | Text and highlights for the first 10 results are included. AI page summaries add $1 per 1,000 pages |
| Contents, per 1,000 pages | $0.80 on /exa/contents, up to 20 URLs a call, one price per page whatever you ask for. A page with no text is not charged | $1 per 1,000 pages per content type, so text and highlights on the same page count as two: $2 per 1,000 |
| An answer to a question | $5 per 1,000 on /v1/web-search, with answer, the page it was read from and its read time, and the results read | /answer costs $5 per 1,000 requests |
| Lists and research | Deep Search: every match on the live web as rows that meet each condition you wrote, at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row, plus 5¢ for an email and 15¢ for a phone. The most a run can cost is quoted before it starts | Agent: $0.012 to $1.00 a request at a fixed effort, or metered at $0.10 per compute unit and $0.005 per search, up to $5 on auto and $20 on ultra by default. $0.02 an email, $0.07 a phone |
| Scheduled searches | A saved request reruns hourly to yearly, each row labeled changed, unchanged or no longer matching. A changed row costs half its rate, an unchanged row 1¢ | Monitors cost $2 per 1,000 requests, plus $1 per 1,000 results above 10 |
| Free use | $10 of credit on a new account, no card: 10,000 searches or 12,500 pages | $10 in credits on sign up, up to 2,500 lite searches, reset to $10 on the first of every month, no payment method, and $10 more once after onboarding |
| Zero data retention | A setting on any API key: a search made with it keeps no request text and no answer after the reply | With Enterprise. The annual Enterprise plan costs $12,000 paid upfront and includes Zero Data Retention, $12,000 in API credits and 25 QPS |
| What answers the call | The whole live web, read at the moment of the call. 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 SimpleQA Verified questions (978 correct) and 64.0 item F1 on all 200 WideSearch tasks | Exa's own index, which tracks over 2 trillion URLs and serves 100 billion pages as of October 2026 |
| A failed call | A 429 with Retry-After charges nothing, and a search that returns no results costs nothing. With an Idempotency-Key, a retried call is charged once | Each API call is a request, priced per 1,000 requests |
What the Exa price list means for your bill
What 100,000 searches a month cost
100,000 searches of 10 results cost $700 on auto, the type a request gets when it names none, and $400 on lite. Ask for 30 results and each auto call costs $0.027, $2,700 for the month.
On SpecStream the same calls cost $100 through Exa's own call shape, and $340 with 30 results, at $0.0034 a call. A call that names no type is a fast search at $0.001.
Contents billed once per page
Exa's /contents bills each content type separately, so 100,000 pages with text and highlights cost $200. On SpecStream /exa/contents reads the same 100,000 pages for $80 in Exa's reply shape, and a page with no text is not charged.
The most accurate web search API
The SpecStream Search API scores 97.9 F-score on all 1,000 official SimpleQA Verified questions, 978 of them correct, and 64.0 item F1 on all 200 official WideSearch tasks. Every score and its method are on the benchmarks page.
Agent runs and rows
Exa Agent bills $0.012 to $1.00 a request at a fixed effort, or meters compute units and searches up to a $5 cap on auto. Deep Search prices the result in place of the run: 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a delivered row, with the most a run can cost approved before it starts, and a run that finds nothing costs nothing. The Exa Agent pricing page has every Agent rate.
Other search API prices next to Exa
SpecStream
The live web data engine for teams and agents. The Search API costs $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results on the fast tier and every drop-in address, and $5 with the answer. The Extract API reads pages at $0.80 per 1,000, and Deep Search delivers full datasets at 5¢, 15¢ or $1 a row. New accounts get $10 of credit, no card.
Tavily
Pay as you go is $0.008 per credit. A basic search costs 1 credit and an advanced search 2, so 1,000 searches cost $8 to $16, with 1,000 free credits every month. SpecStream answers Tavily's own call at $1 per 1,000.
Brave Search API
Search costs $5 per 1,000 requests, with $5 in free credits every month. SpecStream answers Brave's own /res/v1/web/search call at $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results.
Parallel
Search starts at $1 per 1,000 requests, and Extract costs $1 per 1,000 URLs. SpecStream answers Parallel's own search call at $1 per 1,000 in every mode but advanced, and reads pages at $0.80 per 1,000.
Firecrawl
Monthly credit plans from $19 for 5,000 credits. A search costs 2 credits per 10 results and a scraped page 1. SpecStream answers Firecrawl's own calls at $1 per 1,000 searches and $0.80 per 1,000 pages.
How SpecStream scores
The same numbers as the benchmarks page, from the official tasks and scorers.
| SpecStream |  Parallel |  Exa |  Tavily |  Perplexity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web researchWideSearch, GPT-5.6 Luna | 60.9 | 45.5 | 53.0 | 47.9 | 47.0 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Luna | 96 | 94 | 91 | 94 | 94 |
| Factual accuracySimpleQA Verified, GPT-5.6 Sol | 99 | 97 | 91 | 92 | 95 |
How to move your Exa calls to SpecStream
Change one line. https://api.specstream.ai/exa answers the calls your code sends to https://api.exa.ai today, in Exa's JSON, so the code that reads results[] stays as it is. Send a SpecStream key in x-api-key or as a Bearer token.
# Before
curl -X POST https://api.exa.ai/search \
-H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"query": "Series A fintech companies in Spain", "numResults": 10}'
# After
curl -X POST https://api.specstream.ai/exa/search \
-H "x-api-key: $SPECSTREAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"query": "Series A fintech companies in Spain", "numResults": 10}'In the official Python SDK, set the base address and keep the rest of your code:
from exa_py import Exa
exa = Exa(api_key=SPECSTREAM_KEY, base_url="https://api.specstream.ai/exa")
results = exa.search("Series A fintech companies in Spain", num_results=10)
pages = exa.get_contents(["https://example.com"], text=True)query, numResults, includeDomains, excludeDomains, startPublishedDate, endPublishedDate and contents.text work as before, and costDollars.total shows what each call cost. Every field is in the Exa migration guide and the Contents guide.
On MCP, your agent calls search_web with {"q": ...} and read_pages with {"urls": [...]} at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp.
Frequently asked questions
Something we didn't answer? Talk to a human
How much does the Exa API cost?
lite, $7 on auto, $12 on deep-lite and deep and $15 on deep-reasoning, for up to 10 results. Contents costs $1 per 1,000 pages per content type, Answer $5 per 1,000 and Monitors $2 per 1,000.Is Exa free?
lite searches, with no payment method, and $10 more once after onboarding. SpecStream gives a new account $10 of credit with no card, which covers 10,000 searches through Exa's own call.What does an Exa search with no type cost?
auto is the default type. Through SpecStream's Exa address the same call costs $1 per 1,000.How much does Exa charge for more than 10 results?
numResults: 100 on auto costs $0.097. On SpecStream it costs $0.0118.How much does Exa Contents cost?
text and highlights on one page are billed twice, and AI summaries add $1 per 1,000 pages. SpecStream reads pages on Exa's /contents call at $0.80 per 1,000, one price per page.Is there a cheaper alternative to Exa?
/search call at $1 per 1,000 searches of up to 10 results, in Exa's JSON. The change is the base address https://api.specstream.ai/exa and the key.Does SpecStream have an API and an MCP server?
GET https://api.specstream.ai/v1/web-search at $5 per 1,000 searches, or $1 with speed=fast, and the MCP server is at https://api.specstream.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP, with OAuth or an API key.Sources
SpecStream wrote this page. Each Exa price comes from Exa's own pricing docs and pricing page, read on Nov 12, 2026.
- SpecStream pricingspecstream.ai/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- SpecStream for agentsspecstream.ai/agents.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- SpecStream benchmarksspecstream.ai/benchmarks, read Nov 12, 2026
- Exa pricing docsexa.ai/docs/admin/pricing.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Exa pricingexa.ai/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- Exa search quickstartexa.ai/docs/search/quickstart.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Exa pricing updateexa.ai/docs/changelog/pricing-update.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Exa FAQexa.ai/docs/admin/faqs.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Tavily creditsdocs.tavily.com/documentation/api-credits.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Brave Search APIbrave.com/search/api/, read Nov 12, 2026
- Parallel pricingparallel.ai/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026
- Parallel pricing docsdocs.parallel.ai/getting-started/pricing.md, read Nov 12, 2026
- Firecrawl pricingfirecrawl.dev/pricing, read Nov 12, 2026