Exa

Free allowance: USD 10 in credits on signup, reset to USD 10 on the first of each month, no payment method; a one-time USD 10 bonus after onboarding
Verdict: caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
Cost: free tier
Identity: emailno card, no phone
Binding limit: request-rateUSD 10 a month buys about 2,500 lite searches at USD 4 per 1,000; a base price covers 10 results; each result above 10 is USD 1 per 1,000
Evidence: documented2 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
Freshness: stale on 2026-11-22checked 2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-22

Free tier	USD 10 in credits on signup, reset to USD 10 on the first of each month, no payment method; a one-time USD 10 bonus after onboarding unit requests; metered on request-count
Price	none stated
Limits	request-rate (binding) USD 10 a month buys about 2,500 lite searches at USD 4 per 1,000 source request-rate (binding) a base price covers 10 results; each result above 10 is USD 1 per 1,000 source
Identity	email signup states no payment method required
Egress	not applicable: results are JSON, no bytes are stored
Per-object cap	not applicable: the unit is a search request
Retention	credit balance resets monthly, so unused credit does not accumulate
Interface	rest REST at api.exa.ai, bearer key; exa-py and exa-js SDKs; hosted MCP at mcp.exa.ai
Tooling	exa-py, exa-js, hosted MCP
Composes with	Its /contents endpoint is a read path billed per page and per content type
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	The rank-1 position comes from the Artificial Analysis search index, not from a measurement here.
Parsed numbers	has-free-tier 1

Evidence 2

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	exa.ai/pricing	free tier is USD 10 of credit a month, reset monthly, no payment method; lite search USD 4 per 1,000 requests, auto and fast USD 7, contents USD 1 per 1,000 pages, answer USD 5, monitors USD 15
2026-10-22	source not published	not published

Unknown values 1