Exa vs Jina AI Search for AI agents
Exa is a web search API for AI that runs its own crawl and index, with search modes from instant to deep research. Jina AI Search is a search endpoint (s.jina.ai) that searches the web and returns the top results converted to clean, LLM-friendly text.
The short answer
- Exa: Semantic, meaning-based discovery of pages, plus full page text, from an index built for AI.
- Jina AI Search: Getting search results already converted to clean full-page text in one call.
Side by side
| Exa | Jina AI Search | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Exa's own web-scale index (it says it crawls billions of documents per day). | The web (the provider does not name the search engine behind it). |
| Returns | JSON results with title, URL, published date and author; optional full page text, highlights and summaries; deep modes can return a synthesized structured output. | The top five results with URL and page content as LLM-friendly text; Markdown, HTML, JSON or text formats. |
| Before the first call | An account and an API key (Bearer or x-api-key header). | An API key: search is blocked without one. |
| Free | $10 in credits every month, plus a $10 onboarding bonus; no payment method required. | 10 million free tokens with every new API key; each search costs a fixed amount starting at 10,000 tokens (so roughly 1,000 searches at most). |
| Paid | Search from $4 per 1,000 requests; page contents $1 per 1,000 pages. | Not stated on its pages |
| Acting on a result | Through the web page each result links to | Through the web page each result links to |
| AI in its terms | Not stated on its pages | Jina says it does not use customer request data, inputs or prompts to train its models; outputs may not be used to build competing services. |
| MCP server | Official MCP server: https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp (code: https://github.com/exa-labs/exa-mcp-server) | Official MCP server: mcp.jina.ai (code: https://github.com/jina-ai/MCP) |
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use Exa?
An account and an API key (Bearer or x-api-key header).
Is Exa free?
$10 in credits every month, plus a $10 onboarding bonus; no payment method required.
What do I need before I can use Jina AI Search?
An API key: search is blocked without one.
Is Jina AI Search free?
10 million free tokens with every new API key; each search costs a fixed amount starting at 10,000 tokens (so roughly 1,000 searches at most).
Sources
Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.
Exa, read on October 15, 2026:
- exa.ai/docs/reference/search: “The full content text of the search result.”
- exa.ai: “Search the largest index of public web and private information.”
- exa.ai: “crawl billions of documents per day”
- exa.ai/docs/reference/exa-mcp: “https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp”
- exa.ai/pricing: “Search From $4 /1k requests”
- exa.ai/pricing: “Contents $1 /1k pages per content type”
- exa.ai/pricing: “Starter Free $10 credits every month plus a $10 onboarding bonus”
- exa.ai/pricing: “No payment method required”
Jina AI Search, read on October 15, 2026:
- jina.ai/reader: “Every new API key comes with 10M free tokens!”
- jina.ai/reader: “Every request costs a fixed number of tokens, starting from 10,000 tokens”
- jina.ai/reader: “return the top five results with their URLs and contents, each in clean, LLM-friendly text”
- jina.ai/reader: “Add mcp.jina.ai as your MCP server to use our APIs in LLMs.”
- jina.ai/legal: “Jina AI does not use Customer request data, inputs, prompts, or uploaded content to train its models,”
- jina.ai/legal: “use any Output from the Services to develop applications or services that compete with the Services offered by Jina AI”