Compare/vs Exa

Crawl4AI vs Exa

Both give AI agents web search. Exa searches its own index from $4 per 1,000 calls. Crawl4AI searches for $1.00 per 1,000, returns Google's own results page as data, reads the full pages, hard sites included, and never trains on what you send.

Facts last checked 12 Nov 2026

Crawl4AI Cloudcrawl4ai.com

1k searches$1.00, one price

Google results + ads$1.00 with /serp

Training on your dataNever, on every plan

Data regionEU, Singapore or US

EExaexa.ai

1k searches$4 cached · $7 auto

Google results + ads"Cannot provide that, by design"

Training on your dataYes, unless you buy ZDR

Data regionNot published

Talk to us about your team See the side by side ↓

Crawl4AI vs Exa: the short answer

Crawl4AI search costs $1.00 per 1,000 calls; Exa costs . Crawl4AI returns Google's own results page as data, with ads, maps and the AI overview, for 1 credit; Exa says it . On the same key, Crawl4AI reads full pages from $0.10 per 1,000 and gets past bot checks on hard sites, and a failed call costs nothing. Crawl4AI never trains on what you send; Exa's privacy policy says unless you buy its $12,000 Enterprise plan. Crawl4AI runs in the EU, Singapore and the US, and agents set it up from one message with 17 MCP tools.

Which one fits

Different tools fit different jobs. Here is when each one is the better choice.

EChoose Exa if

You want search by meaning over their own index, which .
You search research papers, patents, court opinions and filings as .
You need the web as it was on a past date for evals and backtests: .
You want long research runs and lead lists built on their side, with Exa Agent and Websets.

Choose Crawl4AI if

You build with AI agents: one message sets Crawl4AI up in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI or OpenCode, and 17 MCP tools let the agent search, read pages, run recipes, price a call first and manage its budget.
You need Google's own results: organic, ads, maps and the AI overview with /serp, 1 credit a page.
You need the full page after the search: $0.10 per 1,000 plain pages, hard sites included, and nothing for a failed or blocked call. Exa says it is .
Your queries carry customer names or plans: Crawl4AI does not train on request content, on every plan.
You need named sites as rows: 93 recipes, a LinkedIn profile for 1 credit.
You need data in the EU, Singapore or the US, or the same Apache 2.0 engine inside your network.

For enterprise teams

The controls your security team asks for

Crawl4AI's Enterprise plan next to Exa's. Exa's side restates its own pages; click a line to see the quote.

Control	Crawl4AI Enterprise	EExa Enterprise
SSO (SAML, OIDC)	✓ Yes
SCIM user sync	✓ Yes
Teams, roles and audit log	✓ From Builder ($99), no seat limit
Zero data retention	✓ Yes
IP allowlist and key limits	✓ Yes	Not published
Static exit IPs	✓ Yes	Not published
Where data is processed	EU, Singapore or US, your choice	Not published
Deployment	Cloud, dedicated fleet, inside your network, managed pipeline; one engine
DPA and invoice billing	✓ Every Enterprise plan
Refunds	14 days, if no credits were used
Status page	Hourly uptime per service, public
Uptime and response SLA	Typical: 99.9% a month; service down: first answer within 1 hour, 24/7; part broken: 4 business hours; a question: 1 business day; 5% of the month's fee back if missed, 10% under 99%
Support	A named engineer
Security assurance	Controls monitored every day in Drata, with the evidence kept; dependencies watched for known vulnerabilities; SOC 2 audit by Sensiba under way, report target January 2027. Security pack on request: policies, audit status, DPA, questionnaire answers.

Bring your current invoice

Send us your last scraping bill, from Exa or anyone else. We price the same workload on Crawl4AI and walk you through it on a 30-minute call.

Book the invoice call Enterprise plan

Same job, two calls

6 jobs an agent does every day. The call on each side, and the price of 1,000 of them at list. The label marks the side that costs less for that job.

01 · A web searchone query, 10 results

Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

curl "https://api.crawl4ai.com/search?q=latest+chip+export+rules" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"

1 credit a search, the same price for live and index results.

Exa $4.00–$7.00/ 1,000

curl -X POST https://api.exa.ai/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"latest chip export rules",
       "type":"lite","numResults":5,
       "contents":{"highlights":true}}'

; text or highlights of the 10 results included. Lite .

02 · Google results with ads and mapsrank tracking, local search

Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

curl "https://api.crawl4ai.com/serp?q=best+crm+software&country=us" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"

/serp: organic, ads, maps, AI overview, people also ask. 1 credit; a page from our cache costs half.

Exa Not offered/ 1,000

# No endpoint for Google's results page.
# "Exa cannot provide that, by design"

Exa says rank tracking needs Google's result and ; it has .

03 · A query plus the top pages' text10 full pages for an agent

Crawl4AI costs less$2.00/ 1,000

curl "https://api.crawl4ai.com/search?q=inference+outage+postmortems" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"
curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://…","format":"md"}'

1 credit for the search plus 0.1 a plain page: 1 + 10 × 0.1 = 2 credits. $6.00 if every page needs a browser. The live page, every time.

Exa $7.00/ 1,000

curl -X POST https://api.exa.ai/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"Technical postmortems of large-scale inference outages",
       "numResults":5,
       "contents":{"text":{"maxCharacters":10000}}}'

. A .

04 · One page to Markdowna known URL

Crawl4AI costs less$0.10/ 1,000

curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com","format":"md"}'

0.1 credit for a plain page, 0.5 with a real browser. Markdown and HTML in one call.

Exa $1.00–$3.00/ 1,000

curl -X POST https://api.exa.ai/contents \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ids":["https://example.com/technical-report"],
       "text":{"maxCharacters":10000}}'

: text, highlights and summary are billed one by one.

05 · A LinkedIn profile as rowsname, title, company, history

Crawl4AI costs less$1.00/ 1,000

curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/recipes/linkedin-profile \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"profile":"satyanadella"}'

A recipe: 2 units × 0.5 credit. The same named columns every time; one of 93.

Exa $40 + Agent runs/ 1,000

# An Agent run with the Fiber.ai data source
# POST https://api.exa.ai/agent/runs
# dataSources: fiber

Through Fiber.ai inside an Agent run: a person lookup, .

06 · Structured JSON from a pageyour schema, filled by a model

Crawl4AI $1.87/ 1,000

curl https://api.crawl4ai.com/extract \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -d '{"url":"https://news.ycombinator.com",
       "instruction":"the top stories",
       "schema":{…}}'

Median of real calls this week: the page's effort price plus the model's tokens.

Exa costs less$1.00/ 1,000

curl -X POST https://api.exa.ai/contents \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ids":["https://example.com/company"],
       "summary":{"schema":{…}}}'

A summary in , at $1 per 1,000 pages, for the pages its crawler can read.

Crawl4AI vs Exa, side by side

Each Exa cell restates Exa's own pages, read on 12 Nov 2026. Click it to see the quote and the page. "Not published" means those pages say nothing about it, not that it is missing.

	Crawl4AI Cloud	EExa
Pricing
How you pay	Credits in every plan: Free, Starter $10, Builder $99, Scale $499
Free start	1,000 credits a month, no card: 1,000 searches
1,000 searches	$1.00
1,000 pages (known URLs)	$0.10 plain / $0.50 browser / $2.00 hard
Failed calls	Free, blocked pages included
A page already cached	Half price; every answer says if it came from cache
Refunds	14 days, if no credits were used
What you get back
Search	/search 1 credit; ranked results with title, URL and snippet
Google results as data	/serp: organic, ads, maps, AI overview, people also ask
Full page	/scrape: Markdown, HTML, links, media, metadata, tables; engine and cache on every answer
Whole site	/site deep crawl (500 pages a call); /scan up to 50,000 URLs
Named sites	93 recipes; a LinkedIn profile 1 credit
Documents	PDF, Word and Excel; a PDF costs one page
Change monitoring	Watch (beta)
Hard sites
Bot checks and CAPTCHA pages	Gets past them on hard sites; a page we cannot get costs nothing
Proxies and country	standard and extra levels; country choice	Not published
Agents
MCP	Hosted, no install; key or OAuth; 17 tools
Setup	One message sets it up in 7 coding agents
Agent budget	Estimate, balance, spend cap and top-up as tools; cost on every answer
Open source
License	Apache 2.0, 87,236 GitHub stars
Self-host	The same engine as the Cloud	Not published

Crawl4AI's prices come from its live price list, GET /v1/prices. Prices change; check each product's own pricing page before you decide.

The trade-off

What each one does better

EWhere Exa does best

Their own semantic index. Search by meaning over an index of more than 2 trillion URLs.
Ready collections. Research papers, patents, court opinions and filings in one search call.
The web on a past date. Exa Snapshot returns pages as they were before a cutoff, for evals and backtests.
Long research runs. Exa Agent and Websets build reports and lists on their side.

Where Crawl4AI is the better choice

Search costs less. 1 credit a search, $1.00 per 1,000, plus Google's own results page as data.
The full page, hard sites too. $0.10 per 1,000 plain pages, nothing for a failed or blocked call.
Made for agents. One message sets it up; 17 MCP tools cover search, pages, recipes, cost estimates and the budget.
Built for enterprise. No training on your data on any plan, three regions, teams and an audit log from Builder, SSO and SCIM.

Switch in one prompt

Move your Exa calls in minutes

Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor or Codex in your project. It finds your Exa calls and moves them to Crawl4AI, one endpoint at a time, and keeps both working until you check the results.

Move this project's Exa calls to Crawl4AI Cloud. Read https://crawl4ai.com/llms.txt first. 1. Find every call to the Exa API or SDK. 2. Map each one: POST /search → GET /search · /search + contents.text → GET /search + POST /scrape · category: news → GET /serp (top_stories) · Google ranking (none) → GET /serp · POST /contents → POST /scrape · /contents subpages → POST /site · summary.schema → POST /extract · Agent + Fiber.ai → POST /recipes/{name} · POST /monitors → Watch. 3. Read the key from CRAWL4AI_API_KEY (YOUR_CRAWL4AI_API_KEY). 4. Keep the old path behind a flag; compare 20 real URLs on both; show me the diff.

then add your API key. Get a free key

Exa		Crawl4AI
POST /search	→	GET /search
/search + contents.text	→	GET /search + POST /scrape
category: news	→	GET /serp (top_stories)
Google ranking (none)	→	GET /serp
POST /contents	→	POST /scrape
/contents subpages	→	POST /site
summary.schema	→	POST /extract
Agent + Fiber.ai	→	POST /recipes/{name}
POST /monitors	→	Watch

From both products' docs, 12 Nov 2026.

Using both

Not either-or. Both speak MCP, so one agent can hold both. A team could keep Exa for search by meaning, research papers and Snapshot, and use Crawl4AI for Google's results, full pages from hard sites, recipes and EU data.

Exa
semantic index · papers · Snapshot

Crawl4AI
Google results · full pages · EU data

Frequently asked questions

How much does Exa cost?

Exa is pay-as-you-go: search is $4 per 1,000 calls for cached results (lite) and $7 for auto, page contents $1 per 1,000 pages for each content type, and answers $5 per 1,000. Zero data retention needs its $12,000-a-year Enterprise plan, paid upfront. Crawl4AI search is $1.00 per 1,000, and a plain page $0.10 per 1,000.

Can Exa return Google search results?

No, by its own page: Exa says rank tracking needs "the real Google result in position order. Exa cannot provide that, by design." Crawl4AI /serp returns Google's results page as data, with organic results, ads, maps and the AI overview, for 1 credit on the same key.

Does Exa charge for failed requests?

Exa states that a 503 "is not billed"; its pages do not say whether a failed URL on /contents is billed, and "A failed fetch may return the latest cached copy instead." Crawl4AI charges nothing for a failed call, a blocked page included.

Does Exa train on my data?

Exa's privacy policy says "Query Data is used to improve our products and technology, including by training and fine-tuning models that power our Services." Zero Data Retention needs the Enterprise plan, $12,000 a year paid upfront. Crawl4AI does not use request content to train models, on every plan.

Does Exa have EU data residency?

Exa's pages read on 12 Nov 2026 name no data region; its enterprise page offers to "Configure throughput, regions, and retrieval behavior" without a list. Crawl4AI runs in the EU, Singapore and the US and keeps account and billing data in the EU.

Can Exa scrape sites that block bots?

Exa says it "is not built to read every page on a domain or to reach sites that block crawlers", and its crawler "does not attempt to bypass logins, paywalls, or CAPTCHAs." Crawl4AI gets past bot checks and CAPTCHA pages on hard sites, and a page we cannot get costs nothing.

Is Crawl4AI a self-hosted crawler with no API pricing?

No. A page on Exa's site says so, and it is out of date. Crawl4AI Cloud is a hosted API in three regions with a public price list (Free 1,000 credits a month, Starter $10), /search and Google results, a hosted MCP server, support up to a named engineer, and 87,236 GitHub stars on the open-source engine (GitHub, 2026-11-12).

Sources and method

We read these pages on 12 Nov 2026. Crawl4AI's facts come from its live price list, docs and terms. Something wrong or out of date? Write to hello@crawl4ai.com and we fix it.

This page for your agent or notes · Markdown ↗ · JSON ↗

Crawl4AI vs Exa

Which one fits

EChoose Exa if

Choose Crawl4AI if

The controls your security team asks for

Bring your current invoice

Same job, two calls

Crawl4AI vs Exa, side by side

What each one does better

EWhere Exa does best

Where Crawl4AI is the better choice

Move your Exa calls in minutes

Using both

Frequently asked questions

Get a free API key and run your first crawl.

Talk to us about volume, regions and an SLA.