Websets MCP

Websets MCP connects AI assistants to Exa’s Websets API for building and enriching collections of web entities like companies, people, and research papers.

For most agentic list-building and enrichment, we now recommend the Exa Agent tools in Exa MCP →. They run on the main Exa MCP server and cover async research, list-building, enrichment, and structured output.

What you can do:

Find AI startups in San Francisco with funding over $10M
Build a database of companies and enrich with CEO names, revenue, employee counts
Create a list of research papers and extract key findings
Subscribe to webhooks to be notified when searches and enrichments complete
Bring your own CSV data into Websets via imports for scoping or exclusion

Installation

Get your Exa API key

Connect to Websets MCP:

https://websetsmcp.exa.ai/mcp?exaApiKey=YOUR_EXA_API_KEY

Or add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "websets": {
      "url": "https://websetsmcp.exa.ai/mcp?exaApiKey=YOUR_EXA_API_KEY"
    }
  }
}

Or add to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "websets": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://websetsmcp.exa.ai/mcp?exaApiKey=YOUR_EXA_API_KEY"
    }
  }
}

Run in terminal:

claude mcp add --transport http websets "https://websetsmcp.exa.ai/mcp?exaApiKey=YOUR_EXA_API_KEY"

Add to your Claude Desktop config file:macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.jsonWindows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "websets": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://websetsmcp.exa.ai/mcp?exaApiKey=YOUR_EXA_API_KEY"]
    }
  }
}

Add to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "websets": {
      "serverUrl": "https://websetsmcp.exa.ai/mcp?exaApiKey=YOUR_EXA_API_KEY"
    }
  }
}

For other MCP clients that support remote MCP:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "websets": {
      "url": "https://websetsmcp.exa.ai/mcp?exaApiKey=YOUR_EXA_API_KEY"
    }
  }
}

If your client doesn’t support remote MCP servers directly:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "websets": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://websetsmcp.exa.ai/mcp?exaApiKey=YOUR_EXA_API_KEY"]
    }
  }
}

Available Tools

Webset management

Tool	Description
`create_webset`	Create a collection with search query, criteria, and enrichments
`list_websets`	List all websets in your account
`get_webset`	Get details about a webset
`update_webset`	Update a webset’s title and/or metadata
`delete_webset`	Delete a webset and all its items
`preview_webset`	Preview how a query will be interpreted before creating a webset

Items

Tool	Description
`list_webset_items`	List items in a webset with their data
`get_item`	Get details about a specific item

Searches

Tool	Description
`create_search`	Add more entities to a webset
`get_search`	Check search status
`cancel_search`	Cancel a running search

Enrichments

Tool	Description
`create_enrichment`	Extract data from items (text, number, date, email, phone, url, options)
`get_enrichment`	Check enrichment status
`cancel_enrichment`	Cancel a running enrichment

Webhooks

Tool	Description
`create_webhook`	Subscribe to real-time HTTP callbacks for webset events
`get_webhook`	Get details about a webhook
`update_webhook`	Update a webhook’s URL, events, or metadata
`delete_webhook`	Delete a webhook
`list_webhooks`	List all webhooks in your account

Imports

Tool	Description
`create_import`	Upload your own CSV data into Websets
`get_import`	Get details about an import including its upload URL
`list_imports`	List all imports in your account

Events

Tool	Description
`list_events`	List system events (search, enrichment, webset lifecycle, etc.)

Scheduled monitors are part of the underlying Websets API and the websets.exa.ai dashboard, but are not currently exposed as MCP tools.

Free searches are included. A Websets plan is required for continued use.

Key Concepts

Entity Types: Search for different kinds of entities:

company - companies and startups
person - individuals (e.g., for recruiting)
research_paper - academic papers
article - blog posts and news articles
custom - define your own entity type

Criteria: Natural language filters that determine which results are included. Every result must satisfy all criteria to appear in your webset. Use criteria for hard requirements like “Founded after 2020” or “Located in San Francisco”. Enrichments: Data extractors that pull additional information from results that have already passed your criteria. Enrichments don’t affect filtering-they add columns of data to your results. Use enrichments to extract things like CEO name, employee count, or contact info. Enrichment Formats: The data type for an enrichment:

text - free-form text (CEO name, description)
number - numeric values (employee count, revenue)
date - dates (founding date, funding date)
email, phone, url - contact info
options - multiple choice (e.g., funding stage: Seed, Series A, Series B)

Example: To find AI startups and get their CEO names:

Criteria (filters): “AI company”, “Founded after 2020”, “Has raised funding”
Enrichments (data to extract): CEO name (text), funding amount (number), founding date (date)

Resources

Websets API Docs - Full API reference
Try Websets - Visual interface for websets

Usage Examples

Create a Webset

Create a webset of AI startups in San Francisco founded after 2020. Find 10 companies and enrich with CEO name and funding amount.

Add More Entities

Search for 5 more AI companies that have raised Series A funding.

Extract Data

Add an enrichment to extract employee count for each company.

Subscribe to Events

Create a webhook to https://example.com/hook subscribed to webset.search.completed and webset.enrichment.completed events.

​Installation

Get your Exa API key

​Available Tools

​Key Concepts

​Resources

Installation

Available Tools

Key Concepts

Resources