# Exa > Exa is a real-time knowledge index and retrieval platform built for AI agents. Exa builds and maintains its own index and search models, and continuously indexes the live web alongside structured data about companies, people, financial markets, code, documents, and other sources. Developers use Exa’s APIs to search, retrieve, and research public and private data. **Start for free:** New accounts receive $10 in free credits every month, plus a one-time $10 bonus for completing onboarding. No payment method is required, and the free tier includes access to all API endpoints. For AI agents and automation, start with the agent-native interfaces below. For complete technical documentation, use the Exa documentation index. ## Authentication The Exa API takes an API key, which a user creates in the dashboard. The hosted MCP server also takes OAuth. /search and /contents also accept x402 pay-per-request payments. - [Authentication guide for agents](https://exa.ai/auth.md) - [API keys](https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys) ## MCP Server Connect Exa search, code search, content retrieval, and research tools to Claude, Cursor, Codex, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible clients. The hosted MCP server can be tried without an API key at limited usage levels. - [Exa MCP](https://exa.ai/mcp) - [MCP documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/get-started/exa-mcp.md) - [Hosted MCP server](https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp) - [MCP server repository](https://github.com/exa-labs/exa-mcp-server) ## Agent Skills Install reusable skills that teach coding agents how to search, retrieve content, research companies, generate leads, and build applications with Exa. - [Agent Skills](https://exa.ai/docs/get-started/agent-skills/overview.md) - [Agent Skills repository](https://github.com/exa-labs/agent-skills) ## Documentation Exa's complete technical documentation, including quickstarts, coding-agent references, API guides, SDKs, integrations, examples, and API reference. Use `/docs/llms.txt` to discover the full technical documentation corpus. Exa docs pages are also available as Markdown by appending `.md` to the docs URL, or by requesting the docs URL with `Accept: text/markdown`. - [Documentation index](https://exa.ai/docs/llms.txt) - [Full documentation corpus](https://exa.ai/docs/llms-full.txt) - [API dashboard and keys](https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys) - [Agentic onboarding with Stripe Projects](https://exa.ai/docs/integrations/marketplaces/stripe-projects.md) ## API Reference Markdown endpoint references, each with the endpoint's full OpenAPI request and response schema. `/docs/llms.txt` lists the reference for every endpoint. - [Search](https://exa.ai/docs/reference/search.md) - [Contents](https://exa.ai/docs/reference/get-contents.md) - [Answer](https://exa.ai/docs/reference/answer.md) - [Create an Agent run](https://exa.ai/docs/reference/agent-api/create-a-run.md) - [Get an Agent run](https://exa.ai/docs/reference/agent-api/get-a-run.md) - [Create a monitor](https://exa.ai/docs/reference/monitors/create-a-monitor.md) - [Create a batch](https://exa.ai/docs/reference/batches/create-a-batch.md) ## Products ### Search API Search the web and extract contents from the results. Built for AI applications and agents. Use Deep Search for multi-step web search with reasoning and structured outputs for complex research tasks. - [Search API](https://exa.ai/products/search) - [Search documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/search/quickstart.md) - [Deep Search](https://exa.ai/products/deep) - [Search best practices](https://exa.ai/docs/search/best-practices.md) ### Contents API Extract clean, LLM-ready web content from any URL, including JavaScript-rendered pages, PDFs, and complex layouts. - [Contents API](https://exa.ai/products/contents) - [Contents API documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/contents/quickstart.md) ### Exa Snapshot Search and read the web as it was on a past date. Set a cutoff and Exa returns only page versions stored on or before it, for RL environments, evals and backtests. - [Exa Snapshot](https://exa.ai/products/snapshot) - [Snapshot documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/search/snapshot.md) ### Agent Run multi-step web research, list-building, and enrichment workflows with natural-language answers, structured outputs, and citations. - [Agent](https://exa.ai/products/agent) - [Agent documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/agent/quickstart.md) ### Exa Connect Connect your agents to the world's public and private data, including web analytics, private markets, company and contact data, financial data, healthcare intelligence, compliance data, and other specialized datasets from leading providers. - [Exa Connect](https://exa.ai/connect) - [Connect documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/agent/connect/overview.md) ### Exa Library Structured collections searchable through the standard search call: places, people, companies, job postings, earnings calls, SEC filings, stock pages, market quotes, products, events, podcasts, Wikipedia, research papers, patents, court opinions, indicators and countries. - [Exa Library](https://exa.ai/library) - [People](https://exa.ai/library/person) - [Companies](https://exa.ai/library/organization) - [Places](https://exa.ai/library/place) - [Research papers](https://exa.ai/library/publication) - [Court opinions](https://exa.ai/library/legal/opinion) - [Patents](https://exa.ai/library/legal/patent) - [Podcasts](https://exa.ai/library/podcast) - [Stock pages](https://exa.ai/library/markets/stocks) - [Market quotes](https://exa.ai/library/markets) - [Sports](https://exa.ai/library/sports) - [Weather](https://exa.ai/library/weather) - [Indicators](https://exa.ai/library/indicator) - [Countries](https://exa.ai/library/geoarea) - [Earnings calls](https://exa.ai/library/earnings-call) - [Job postings](https://exa.ai/library/job-posting) - [Products](https://exa.ai/library/product) - [Events](https://exa.ai/library/event) - [Wikipedia](https://exa.ai/library/wikipedia-article) - [SEC filings](https://exa.ai/library/sec-filing) ## Use Cases Exa powers web search and data retrieval for coding agents, research agents, GTM workflows, chatbots, voice agents, news monitoring, people search, company search, and enrichment. - [AI assistants with live-web context](https://exa.ai/use-cases/ai-assistants) - [GTM and enrichment](https://exa.ai/use-cases/gtm) - [Coding agents with current docs and code search](https://exa.ai/use-cases/coding) - [LLM grounding and web search for inference providers](https://exa.ai/use-cases/inference-providers) - [LLM training data and RL environments](https://exa.ai/use-cases/model-training) - [Financial research, due diligence, and risk monitoring](https://exa.ai/use-cases/finance) - [Legal research and compliance monitoring with cited sources](https://exa.ai/use-cases/legal) - [Candidate sourcing and recruiting data](https://exa.ai/use-cases/recruiting) - [Demos](https://exa.ai/demos) ## Integrations Use Exa with agent frameworks, SDKs, automation tools, AI assistants, and developer platforms including OpenAI, Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, CrewAI, LlamaIndex, Pydantic AI, n8n, and others. Coding agents can also use Stripe Projects for agentic onboarding to create an Exa account, provision an API key, and sync it directly into a project. - [Integrations directory](https://exa.ai/integrations) - [Agentic onboarding with Stripe](https://exa.ai/docs/integrations/marketplaces/stripe-projects.md) ## SDKs Official Exa SDKs for Python and JavaScript/TypeScript. - [Python SDK](https://github.com/exa-labs/exa-py) - [JavaScript SDK](https://github.com/exa-labs/exa-js) - [Python SDK documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/sdks/quickstart.md) - [JavaScript SDK documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/sdks/quickstart.md) ## OpenAPI Machine-readable API specifications. Use the OpenAPI specification as the source of truth for request and response schemas; use the guides for recommended usage patterns and defaults. - [OpenAPI specification (JSON)](https://exa.ai/docs/exa-spec.json) - [OpenAPI specification (YAML)](https://exa.ai/docs/exa-spec.yaml) - [Team Management API specification](https://exa.ai/docs/team-management-spec.yaml) ## Pricing Exa can be started for free. New accounts receive $10 in free credits every month, plus a one-time $10 bonus for completing onboarding, with no payment method required. The free tier includes access to all endpoints. Paid API usage is pay-as-you-go, with enterprise plans available for higher limits, custom infrastructure, security requirements, and support. - [Pricing](https://exa.ai/pricing) - [Pricing documentation](https://exa.ai/docs/admin/pricing.md) - [Billing](https://exa.ai/docs/admin/billing.md) - [Rate limits](https://exa.ai/docs/admin/billing.md) ## Evals and Benchmarks Exa publishes evaluations of search quality, latency, vertical retrieval, coding-agent search, and agentic research. Where available, datasets and evaluation harnesses are open source and reproducible. - [Evals](https://exa.ai/evals) - [Open-source benchmarks](https://github.com/exa-labs/benchmarks) ## Comparisons Detailed comparisons of Exa with other search, retrieval, and research APIs include product differences, pricing, benchmarks, and recommended use cases. - [Exa vs Tavily](https://exa.ai/versus/tavily) - [Exa vs Parallel](https://exa.ai/versus/parallel) - [Exa vs Perplexity](https://exa.ai/versus/perplexity) - [Exa vs Firecrawl](https://exa.ai/versus/firecrawl) - [Exa vs Google Search](https://exa.ai/versus/google-search) - [Exa vs Brave](https://exa.ai/versus/brave) - [Exa vs SerpAPI](https://exa.ai/versus/serpapi) - [Exa vs Serper](https://exa.ai/versus/serper) - [Exa vs You.com](https://exa.ai/versus/you) ## Customers See how production AI products and agents use Exa for web search, research, coding, company and people data, and enrichment. - [Customer stories](https://exa.ai/customers) ## Research Technical research and engineering work from Exa on web-scale retrieval, search models, evaluation, search infrastructure, and agentic search. - [Research](https://exa.ai/research) - [Blog](https://exa.ai/blog) - [Learn: guides, comparisons and explainers](https://exa.ai/blog/learn) ## Company and Trust Exa is an applied AI research lab building search infrastructure for AI systems. - [About Exa](https://exa.ai/about) - [Security](https://exa.ai/security) - [Trust Center](https://trust.exa.ai) - [GitHub](https://github.com/exa-labs) - [Changelog](https://exa.ai/docs/changelog.md)