Exa vs Perplexity AI

Side-by-side comparison of Exa and Perplexity AI: pricing, features, API access, and community ratings.

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	Exa Web search API, website crawler, and deep research engine built for AI agents Visit	Perplexity AI AI-powered search engine that answers questions with cited, up-to-date sources. Visit
Category	Chat assistants	Search & research
Pricing	Freemium	Freemium
Starting price		USD 20/mo
Free tier
Audience	Technical	All audiences
API available
Open source
Self-hostable
Model provider		Perplexity / OpenAI / Anthropic
Founded		2022
Headquarters	US	San Francisco, US
Key strengths	·Fastest search API with results under 180ms (Exa Instant) ·Best-in-class accuracy on FRAMES, Tip-of-Tongue, and Seal0 benchmarks ·Token-efficient highlight extraction reducing token usage by up to 90% ·Supports structured outputs across 70M+ company enrichments	·real-time web search ·cited sources ·Sonar API ·follow-up questions