Datacircle

Exa pricing and alternatives: cached web search API, POST /search, Search, instant

Exa's sitellms.txt
83% complete: 5 of the 6 key fields we checkSee the 6 fields
$0.00per 1,000 searchesThe cheapest of the 35 plans we rank by price is Parallel, top-up, Pay as you go, POST /v1/search, Search (fast), at $1.00 per 1,000 searches.
Plan: World AgentKit free trial one of Exa's 7 plans
Call: POST /search, Search, instant one of Exa's 11 calls for this API
API: Cached web search API one of Exa's 5 APIs

About this item

  • Stored. You get pages from Exa's index. Exa doesn't say how old its data is.
  • 5 of the 6 key fields we check. Date, Author, Text, Links, Answer.
  • Nothing to pay. You get up to 100 calls a month.
  • One call. You send query to POST /search. You set type to "instant". The call returns the matching web pages.
  • Who can get it: with conditions. Keep data: with conditions. Use data: with conditions.

Exa: cached web search API alternatives

The table starts with Exa's cheapest paid plan. Next come plans from other providers with the price per 1,000 searches closest to Exa's. Each plan in the table gives stored data.

Exa, pay as you go, x402 or MPP, paid per request, POST /search, Search, instantParallel, top-up, Pay as you go, POST /v1/search, Search (advanced)
$ per 1,000 searches$4.00$5.00
Completeness100%33%
Billingpay as you gopay first
Payper callany amount
Freshnessstoredstored
Who can get itAI agents paying in USDC over x402 or MPP, no Exa account or API key neededanyone outside the jurisdictions export law bars

Cached web search API pricing: plans compared

Sources

From each provider's own pricing page and docs, and from what providers tell us. We read this row from these pages on 2026-10-27.

  1. exa-public.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Exa%20-%20Online%20Master%20Subscription%20Agreement%20%28v2.2026-09-17%29.pdf
  2. exa.ai/blog/company-search-benchmarks
  3. exa.ai/blog/people-search-benchmark
  4. exa.ai/docs/admin/billing
  5. exa.ai/docs/admin/faqs
  6. exa.ai/docs/admin/pricing
  7. exa.ai/docs/changelog
  8. exa.ai/docs/exa-spec.json
  9. exa.ai/docs/integrations/payments/mpp/quickstart
  10. exa.ai/docs/integrations/payments/nevermined
  11. exa.ai/docs/integrations/payments/x402/agentkit
  12. exa.ai/docs/integrations/payments/x402/quickstart
  13. exa.ai/docs/llms.txt
  14. exa.ai/docs/reference/search
  15. exa.ai/docs/search/best-practices
  16. exa.ai/docs/search/data/companies-people
  17. exa.ai/docs/search/data/news
  18. exa.ai/docs/search/data/overview
  19. exa.ai/docs/search/quickstart
  20. exa.ai/llms.txt
  21. exa.ai/msa
  22. exa.ai/pricing
  23. exa.ai/terms-of-service

Product details

The key fields this plan's answer can hold, then each filled column in its row on the sheet.

  • Date
  • Author
  • Text
  • Summary, not in the answer
  • Links
  • Answer
Price
$ per 1,000 searches$0.00
Percall
Billingfree
Charges
Most per search10
Also pays forContents · from the same budget: Search (every other type and category)
Not found
$ per 1,000$0.00
In their words
Their pitchLegacy. Use lite instead. Runs a minimum-latency search that trades some search depth for speed.
Data
Keep dataself-serve: nothing copied or stored past a browser's temporary display cache, unless its terms or Exa in writing allow more, Enterprise, under its Master Subscription Agreement: no limit, the output is yours
Use dataself-serve: as its documentation allows, the output for your own internal business purposes, nothing resold or sublicensed, no competing product, Enterprise: also through your own products to your end users, no competing product, no benchmarks shared
Plan
Pay$0
Enough for100 calls a month
The call
You sendquery, type "instant". Optional: category, numResults, includeDomains, userLocation, userIdentifier, contents.text, contents.highlights, contents.summary, contents.extras, contents.livecrawlTimeout, contents.maxAgeHours, contents.snapshotAsOf, contents.subpages, contents.subpageTarget, additionalQueries, outputSchema, objective, systemPrompt, moderation, compliance
Path/search
About the plan
PlanWorld AgentKit free trial
Who can get itAI agents in World's AgentBook backed by a World ID-verified human, 100 requests a month per human across their agents
The 22 fields the plan's answer can hold

request ID, page title, URL, published date, author, document ID, image, favicon, text, highlights, highlight scores, subpages, links, image links, rich image links, rich links, code blocks, cost in dollars, search time, synthesized output, output citations, output confidence

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