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It's a split decision.
Choose Exa if your application needs search plus webpage content, cited research, monitoring or structured company enrichment through one API stack. Choose Brave Search API if you want search and LLM context backed by Brave’s independent index, with examples in Python, cURL, JavaScript and Go. Both are hosted services. Exa’s $10 monthly credits and endpoint-specific pricing suit testing varied workflows; Brave’s $5-per-1,000 Search requests give a straightforward rate for basic search.
01Side by side
| Exa | Brave Search API | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Usage-based; rates vary by endpoint and Agent effort | Per request; Answers also charges for tokens |
| Free tier | $10 monthly credits plus $10 onboarding; 10 Search QPS | $5 monthly credits; Search allows 50 requests per second |
| API and SDKs | Search, Contents, Agent and Monitors APIs | Search, Answers, Context, image, video and news endpoints |
| Integrations | Free plan includes 50+ integrations | API examples in Python, cURL, JavaScript and Go |
| Deployment model | Hosted API service | Hosted API service |
| Platforms | Web | Web |
| Limits and scaling | 25 Search QPS on PAYGO; custom QPS on Custom | 50 Search requests/sec; Answers 2/sec |
| Lock-in | Hosted search stack; migration means replacing API calls | Hosted API on Brave’s independent index; replace API calls |
Exa Choose Exa if
- Choose Exa if you need webpage contents alongside search results.
- Choose Exa if agents need cited research or structured outputs.
- Choose Exa if you want scheduled search monitoring and webhooks.
Brave Search API Choose Brave Search API if
- Choose Brave Search API if you want search from an independent index.
- Choose Brave Search API if you need ranked passages for LLM context.
- Choose Brave Search API if Python, cURL, JavaScript or Go examples fit your stack.
02Pricing at real usage
Exa’s Free plan includes $10 in monthly credits and a $10 onboarding bonus. PAYGO has no monthly subscription price listed. Search costs $4 per 1,000 Lite requests, $7 for Auto and $12 for Deep; Contents costs $1 per 1,000 pages and Monitors $2 per 1,000 requests. Agent pricing adds effort charges from $0.012 to $1 per request, plus $0.10 per ACU and charges for searches and enrichments.
Brave applies $5 in credits each month for Search, Answers, Spellcheck and Autosuggest. Search costs $5 per 1,000 requests. Answers costs $4 per 1,000 queries, plus $5 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. At 1,000 basic Search requests, Exa Lite is $4 and Brave is $5; those rates do not cover equivalent research or context workflows.
03API, SDKs and integration
Exa exposes Search, Contents, Agent and Monitors APIs. Search can target categories including web, news, companies, research, people and financials. Contents returns webpage text and relevant excerpts; Agent runs research with structured outputs and cited sources; Monitors run searches on a cadence and send updates through webhooks. The Free plan lists 50+ integrations, though the homepage does not name them. Exa links to documentation, but the homepage does not identify language-specific SDKs or a CLI.
Brave provides web search, LLM Context, Answers, image, video, news, Spellcheck and Autosuggest APIs. LLM Context returns ranked passages with source URLs and timestamps, and lets callers set context size from 1k to about 33k tokens. Its homepage shows examples in Python, cURL, JavaScript and Go; these are code examples, not a claim about separate SDK packages. Both products are hosted API integrations, so fit depends on your endpoint needs and the client code you maintain.
04Open source, self-hosting and lock-in
Neither vendor publishes an open-source license or a self-hosting option. Both products are presented as hosted APIs, so running the search service inside your own infrastructure is not a documented deployment path. The vendors also do not publish a data-export procedure on the vendor's site available here.
Plan for API-level migration rather than assuming you can move an index. Exa combines search with content retrieval, agent research, monitoring and structured enrichment; replacing that stack means finding equivalents for each workflow and adapting result handling. Brave’s search API uses Brave’s independent index, so replacing it means changing the search provider and checking how your application uses its results, passages and metadata. Keep provider-specific fields behind an internal interface and store the source URLs and content your application needs.
Questions people ask
Which API is cheaper for basic web search?
Exa Lite Search costs $4 per 1,000 requests; Brave Search costs $5 per 1,000 requests. Those are basic search rates, not equivalent all-in costs for research or LLM context. Exa Auto and Deep cost $7 and $12 per 1,000 requests, respectively.
Does Exa or Brave have a larger free tier?
Exa includes $10 in monthly credits and a $10 onboarding bonus, with 10 Search QPS. Brave applies $5 in monthly credits for Search, Answers, Spellcheck and Autosuggest. Credit value alone does not establish how many workflows each tier can support.
Which should I choose for LLM grounding?
Brave’s LLM Context endpoint returns ranked, extracted passages with source URLs and timestamps, and supports configurable context from 1k to about 33k tokens. Exa offers relevant webpage excerpts through Contents and cited research through Agent. Choose based on whether you need passages or broader research workflows.
Do either of these APIs have published rate limits?
Exa lists 10 Search QPS on Free and up to 25 Search QPS on PAYGO; its Custom plan offers custom Search QPS and Agent concurrency. Brave lists 50 requests per second for Search and 2 per second for Answers. Monthly request ceilings are not published for Brave.