By use case · Exa pricing
Exa pricing, Exa API pricing and Exa search API cost per 1,000 requests
The short answer
Exa is prepaid pay-as-you-go with no subscription and no minimum spend. Search costs $4 per 1,000 requests on Instant and $7 on Fast or Auto, with up to 10 results and their page contents included. Deep Search is $12 to $15 per 1,000, Answer $5, Monitors $15, and the Contents endpoint $1 per 1,000 pages for each content view. Every account gets $10 in free credits a month that do not roll over. Three rules move the real bill: each result above ten adds $1 per 1,000, contents beyond the tenth result are billed at $1 per 1,000 pages, and text, highlights and summary are billed as separate views. Every figure here was read from the Exa pricing page and its billing documentation, never from an aggregator.
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Exa publishes one clean table of endpoint prices, and at first glance it is the simplest price list in this category. A search is $7 per 1,000 requests. Contents is $1 per 1,000 pages. There is no plan ladder to decode and no credit multiplier to look up.
The catch is in the column headers. The $7 covers up to 10 results. Ask for 20 and every extra result adds $1 per 1,000, and the page contents that were free for the first ten are now billed at $1 per 1,000 pages as well. On the Contents endpoint the $1 is per content type, so asking for text and highlights on the same page is two charges. None of this is hidden, but none of it is added up for you either, and it is exactly where agent workloads spend their money.
The free allowance is also smaller than older reviews say. Exa gives $10 in credits every month, which resets on the first and does not accumulate, plus a one-time $10 bonus for finishing onboarding. At $7 per 1,000 that is about 1,400 Fast searches a month, or 2,500 on Instant.
We sell a crawl API, so read the comparison column with that in mind. Exa is the right purchase for finding pages nobody listed in advance, and we do not run web search at any price. Where we compete is the other half of the bill: reading and structuring pages from sites you already know, at volume.
If you are choosing between the two search APIs rather than pricing one, Exa vs Tavily pricing per 1,000 searches works through both price lists side by side, and Tavily pricing by credit and tier has the full Tavily ladder. For the crawling half of the job, Exa alternatives for whole-site crawling compares the field, and our web scraping API pricing breakdown puts every per-page rate on one page.
Any URL in LLM-ready data out
robots.txt respected public data only
Why it works
Three billing rules the Exa pricing page leaves you to work out
Ten results is the price, not the limit
The base rate covers up to 10 results. Every result above ten adds $1 per 1,000, and contents for those extra results are billed at $1 per 1,000 pages. A Fast search asking for 20 results with highlights therefore costs $7 plus $10 plus $10, or $27 per 1,000 requests. The same call at 10 results is $7.
Every content view is its own charge
On the Contents endpoint a page is billed once per view, and the views are text, highlights and summary. One page with text and highlights is two charges, $2 per 1,000 pages. A summary also makes a model call on every page, and a JSON schema is passed through the summary, so typed output always sits on top of the text you already paid for.
The free $10 does not stack
The monthly grant resets to $10 on the first of each calendar month and unused credit does not carry over. When the balance reaches zero, requests return 402 Payment Required rather than degrading, so an agent in production stops mid-task. Set up auto recharge, or a per-key budget, before the first busy week rather than after.
What it handles
Any URL in, clean structured data out
Point ClawEngine at a public page and it crawls, renders the JavaScript and extracts clean markdown or typed JSON in one call. Define a schema for structured fields, and respect robots.txt and Terms of Service by default.
- Every published Exa endpoint rate, read from its own pricing page and documentation
- What one request, one result and one content view each cost
- Cost per 1,000 searches at 10, 20 and 100 results
- Monthly cost of reading 50,000 to 1,500,000 known pages
- Published rate limits per endpoint and what happens at a zero balance
- Where Exa is the right purchase and a flat per-page crawl API is not
{
"url": "https://example.com/products/atlas",
"title": "Atlas Field Notebook",
"markdown": "# Atlas Field Notebook\n\nDurable...",
"data": {
"name": "Atlas Field Notebook",
"price": 24.00,
"currency": "USD",
"rating": 4.7
},
"links": [ "/products", "/cart" ],
"metadata": { "rendered": true }
}Head to head
Exa pricing by endpoint, with a flat per-page crawl API in the third column
Every Exa figure below was read from its pricing page and its billing and API documentation, never from a review aggregator. We put ourselves third and we lose several rows outright.
Swipe to compare all columns →
| What you are comparing | Exa Search and Answer | Exa Contents | ClawEngine |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the meter counts | Requests, with a base price that covers up to 10 results | Pages, once for every content view you ask for | Pages. One page of plan allowance per page returned |
| Entry price | $10 in free credits a month, then prepaid pay-as-you-go with no minimum | The same credit balance | $49 a month on Hobby. No free plan |
| Cost per 1,000 searches, 10 results | $4 Instant, $7 Fast or Auto, $12 Deep-lite and Deep, $15 Deep-Reasoning, $5 Answer | Not applicable | Not offered. We do not run web search at any price |
| Cost per 1,000 Fast searches, 20 results with highlights | $27: $7 base, $10 for results 11 to 20, $10 for their contents | Not applicable | Not offered |
| Cost per 1,000 known pages, one text view | Included for the first 10 results of a search only | $1.00, or $2.00 for text plus highlights | $0.98 Hobby, $0.40 Startup, $0.27 Scale, markdown and JSON included |
| Typed JSON against your own schema | Through outputSchema, which adds a synthesis step to the search | Through summary.schema, a model call on every page, on top of the text view | Included at the same per-page rate |
| Monthly cost, 50,000 known pages | Not the right endpoint for this job | $50 for text, $100 for text plus highlights | $49 on Hobby |
| Monthly cost, 250,000 known pages | Not the right endpoint for this job | $250 for text, $500 for text plus highlights | $99 on Startup |
| Monthly cost, 1,500,000 known pages | Not the right endpoint for this job | $1,500 for text, $3,000 for text plus highlights | $399 on Scale |
| Whole-site crawling | Not the product. Search finds pages across the whole web | A subpages count per starting URL, steered by subpageTarget. The docs say the number crawled may be lower | Seed URL, page budget and include paths, billed as pages |
| Freshness | Cached content by default, maxAgeHours sets how fresh it must be | The same. maxAgeHours 0 forces a live fetch | Pages fetched when you request them |
| Published rate limits | 10 queries per second, up to 25 on pay-as-you-go. Deep Search 5 | 100 queries per second | Concurrency scales with tier |
| At a zero balance | Requests return 402 Payment Required until credits are added. Auto recharge available | The same | A monthly page allowance on a fixed subscription |
| Free usage | $10 a month that does not accumulate, plus a one-time $10 onboarding bonus | The same grant | None. Paid plans only |
| Best for | Agents and answer engines that need to find pages nobody listed in advance | Reading a few thousand known URLs a month, or pages Exa has already cached | Pipelines crawling known sites at volume, output as markdown or typed fields |
Why ClawEngine
One API that crawls, renders and extracts
Not a raw HTML dump, not a headless browser fleet to run, and not a brittle parser to maintain. One call crawls a public page, renders its JavaScript and returns clean markdown or typed JSON, built for RAG pipelines and AI agents.
LLM-ready output
Clean markdown or typed JSON with the boilerplate stripped, so the data drops straight into a vector store, a prompt or an agent without a cleanup step.
JavaScript rendered
Each page loads in a real browser environment before extraction, so single-page apps and client-rendered content come back complete, not as an empty shell.
Compliance-first
ClawEngine works on public, permitted data only. It respects robots.txt and site Terms of Service and honors crawl-delay, so responsible scraping is the default.
Code examples
Reading known sites without paying per content view
Exa Contents bills each page once per view, so text plus a schema summary is at least two charges on every page. If the sites are already on your list, send a seed URL, a page budget and a schema, and the whole job bills as pages with markdown and JSON included.
curl https://clawengine.ai/v1/crawl \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CLAWENGINE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"url": "https://example.com/pricing",
"max_pages": 200,
"include_paths": ["/pricing*", "/plans/*"],
"format": "json",
"schema": {
"plan_name": "string",
"monthly_price_usd": "number",
"included_units": "string"
}
}'
# 200 pages of plan allowance. No per-view charge, no summary line,
# no extra cost for the JSON on top of the page text.People also ask
Exa pricing, the questions buyers ask
How much does Exa cost?
Exa charges per request with no subscription. Search is $4 per 1,000 requests on Instant and $7 on Fast or Auto, Deep Search $12 to $15, Answer $5 and Monitors $15, each covering up to 10 results. Contents is $1 per 1,000 pages per content view. Every account gets $10 in free credits a month.
Is the Exa API free?
Partly. Every new team gets $10 in credits, reset to $10 on the first of each month, plus a one-time $10 bonus for completing onboarding, with no card required. The grant does not accumulate. At standard rates $10 buys about 1,400 Fast searches or 2,500 Instant searches, so it covers prototyping, not production traffic.
How much does Exa search cost per request?
A Fast or Auto search is $0.007 per request and an Instant search is $0.004, each with up to 10 results and their page contents. Deep-lite and Deep are $0.012 and Deep-Reasoning is $0.015. Results above ten add $0.001 each, and contents for those extra results add another $0.001 per page.
How much does Exa Contents cost?
Contents is $1 per 1,000 pages for each content view, where the views are text, highlights and summary. One page with text only is $0.001, with text and highlights $0.002. AI page summaries carry a $1 per 1,000 pages line. When contents come back inside a search, the first ten results are included at no extra charge.
What does numResults do to Exa pricing?
It is the biggest lever on the bill. The base price covers 10 results, so numResults 20 on a Fast search adds $10 per 1,000 requests for the extra results and, with one content view, another $10 for their contents: $27 instead of $7. At 100 results with contents the same call is $187 per 1,000 requests.
Does Exa charge separately for text and highlights?
Yes. Exa bills each content view separately, so requesting text and highlights on the same page returns and bills two views. Its own documentation recommends picking one view per request. For feeding an agent, highlights are usually enough and cost the same as text, so requesting both mostly doubles the contents line.
What happens when Exa credits run out?
Requests return 402 Payment Required until credits are added. The same error comes back when an individual API key reaches the budget you assigned it. Exa offers auto recharge from the billing dashboard, which is the practical fix for a production agent, since a 402 halts the task rather than returning partial results.
What are the Exa API rate limits?
Search, Answer and chat completions allow 10 queries per second per team, raised to up to 25 on pay-as-you-go. Deep Search types allow 5 per second, Contents 100 per second, and Agent runs 5 per second with 50 active at once. Limits apply across all keys on the team, and Enterprise sets them by contract.
How much does Exa Deep Search cost?
Deep-lite and Deep both cost $12 per 1,000 requests and Deep-Reasoning costs $15, each with up to 10 results. Extra results and AI page summaries cost the same as on a standard search. Latency runs from about four seconds on Deep-lite to 12 to 40 seconds on Deep-Reasoning, and all three are limited to 5 queries per second.
Is Exa cheaper than Tavily?
For a plain search at 10 results, usually yes. Exa Instant is $4 per 1,000 and Fast $7, while a Tavily basic search is 1 credit, $5 to $8 per 1,000 depending on plan, and an advanced search is double that. Tavily includes 1,000 free credits a month against the $10 Exa grant, and Tavily plans suit steady volume.
Good questions
Questions about Exa pricing
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Point ClawEngine at a public page and one call crawls, renders the JavaScript and extracts clean markdown or typed JSON, ready for your RAG pipeline or AI agent. Public, permitted data only.
Crawl · render JS · extract markdown & JSON · robots.txt respected, public data only