# Exa

33 Hacker News commenters recommended Exa and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a strong semantic search API for agents, with a free tier. Its most common caveat is weak coverage of the latest news.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong general web search for agents (5 comments): "for inference you generally just want the best web search available, which obviously I'd argue is Exa" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333338)) "if you're going paid, Parallel, Firecrawl, Tavily and Exa are all pretty good now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144703)) "Claude with Exa search performs better that Claude with native search" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49970308))
- Works as an MCP in coding tools (2 comments): "I've had generally good experiences with Exa, I use it as an MCP in all my various coding tools" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48266369)) "Exa even has a pretty good MCP and free tier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49974133))
- Good at people and entity search (2 comments): "Exa could be great in some for example people search but is pretty bad at getting the latest content of the page" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333690)) "exa is particularly strong for entity and people search but can be bad at latest news" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470883))
- Returns clean markdown from pages (2 comments): "Extraction of main content from HTMLs, the index stores markdown representations (free of headers/footers/sidebars/menus etc)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49970456)) "has worked well for me, returning markdown for a URL" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49456886))

## What people warn about

- Weak on latest news and content (2 comments): "Exa could be great in some for example people search but is pretty bad at getting the latest content of the page" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333690)) "exa is particularly strong for entity and people search but can be bad at latest news" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470883))
- Trains on or logs queries (3 comments): "Query Data is used to improve our products and technology, including by training and fine-tuning models" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47948293)) "I am pretty sure exa specifically say it trains on your data in it's privacy policy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49965220)) "both log by default with enterprise opt in for zdr." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909699))
- Pricing gets expensive at volume (2 comments): "I've only recently learned Exa pricing is a bit crazy (especially on searches where you source 30-40 sources)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780161)) "Exa charges 7$ per 1000 queries, and charges additionally for each result that is out of top-10." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49436442))
- Setup and support problems (2 comments): "they had me email the support, which they ignored and required a follow up" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45843470)) "When I tried adding Exa through the GUI, it didn't stick." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47440594))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [SerpApi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/serpapi.md): 16 recommend
- [Brave Search API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brave-search-api.md): 15 recommend
- [DeepSeek search API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-search-and-fetch.md): 15 recommend
- [Kagi Search API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kagi-search-api.md): 10 recommend
- [Tavily](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tavily.md): 9 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://exa.ai/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Exa", https://hackerapproved.com/p/exa/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).