What is Exa?
What is Exa?
Exa provides web search and research infrastructure for AI applications. It combines an independent search index with content extraction and agentic research APIs, so applications can find sources, retrieve their contents, and produce grounded outputs.
Which Exa product should I use?
Which Exa product should I use?
- Use the Search API to find ranked web results and optionally return highlights, full text, or summaries.
- Use the Contents API when you already have URLs and need their extracted contents.
- Use the Agent API for asynchronous, multi-step research, list building, and structured enrichment.
- Use Monitors to run recurring searches and receive newly discovered results.
What is Exa Connect?
What is Exa Connect?
Exa Connect gives Exa Agent access to premium data providers alongside web search in the same run. Add providers through
dataSources, and Exa Agent chooses when to query each source before combining partner data and web research into one grounded, structured output.For self-serve providers, Exa handles provider authentication and usage billing, so you do not need to build a separate integration or establish a separate provider account.What's different about Exa Search?
What's different about Exa Search?
Exa Search is built for programmatic retrieval rather than ad-driven browsing. It can search by meaning, accept natural-language queries, and return page contents in the same request. Search modes range from low-latency retrieval to multi-step research with structured output.See the Search quickstart for available search types and response formats.
How large is Exa's index?
How large is Exa's index?
As of August 2026, Exa’s index tracks 1.4 trillion URLs and serves 100 billion pages from across the public web. The index changes continuously as pages are discovered, refreshed, or removed.
How fresh are Exa's results?
How fresh are Exa's results?
Exa discovers and refreshes pages continuously, with timing that varies by source and how often a page changes. When you need content newer than the indexed copy, use the Contents API’s
maxAgeHours option to control cache age and live retrieval.Does Exa operate a crawler?
Does Exa operate a crawler?
Yes. Exa operates
ExaSearchBot to discover and refresh pages on the public web for search and retrieval. It respects the Robots Exclusion Protocol, limits request rates per site, and does not attempt to bypass logins, paywalls, or CAPTCHAs.robots.txt controls crawling. To remove an already indexed page, use a noindex robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag: noindex response header; Exa removes the page after its next re-fetch. See Exa Search Crawler for the user agent, cryptographic verification instructions, and crawler controls.How does Exa help ground LLM responses?
How does Exa help ground LLM responses?
Exa returns source URLs and the web content used for retrieval, allowing an application to generate answers with citations and inspect the supporting evidence. Search quality and source grounding can reduce unsupported claims, but the application and its language model remain responsible for how retrieved information is interpreted and presented.
Can I restrict which sources Exa searches?
Can I restrict which sources Exa searches?
Yes. Use
includeDomains to limit Search to selected domains or excludeDomains to remove unwanted sources. Exa also provides data categories for source-specific retrieval such as companies, people, news, and code. See Search best practices and Data.What security and data-retention options are available?
What security and data-retention options are available?
Exa offers security and compliance controls for production and enterprise use cases, including Zero Data Retention and HIPAA compliance for eligible Enterprise customers. See Security & Compliance for details.