Which is better for AI agents, Exa or Brave Search API?

Exa was more accurate than Brave in Grounder's benchmark (88.4% against 84.4% on SimpleQA, 31.5% against 16.2% on SealQA) but slower: 2.1 s against 591 ms median search, and 5.2k against 1.1k answer tokens. Pick Brave for speed and a small token load, Exa for harder questions.

Last checked: 20 October 2026. Disclosure: Grounder (grounder.net) publishes this page, sends searches to both providers and ran the benchmark cited here.

Quick pick

Exa

• What it is: Search on its own index using embeddings, from lite to deep, with company, people and news categories and a Contents endpoint. The first 10 results' contents are included (Exa changelog, 3 March 2026).
• Pricing: $4, $7 or $12 per 1,000 searches by type, for up to 10 results; each result above 10 costs $1 per 1,000 results.
• Strengths: Higher accuracy than Brave in Grounder's run, the top Artificial Analysis score, hosted keyless MCP, and a crawler site owners can verify.
• Limits: About five times the answer tokens and 3.5 times the median latency of Brave on SimpleQA. The top Artificial Analysis score uses Dynamic Highlights, a preview needing a beta header. A lower default rate limit. Zero data retention is Enterprise only.

Brave

• What it is: Search API on Brave's own crawled index, with a Web endpoint and an LLM Context endpoint that returns pre-extracted page chunks (1,024 to 32,768 tokens). Goggles re-rank results.
• Pricing: $5 per 1,000 requests on the Search plan; the Answers plan is $4 per 1,000 plus $5 per million tokens.
• Strengths: Speed, a small token load, 50 queries a second, and LLM Context at the same price as Web search.
• Limits: Lower accuracy than Exa on SealQA in Grounder's run. Terms bar storing results without a storage-rights plan. No hosted MCP server found. A card is required for the free credit. Brave and News Corp are in litigation: Brave sued for a declaration of fair use and News Corp counter-sued on 21 July 2026 (allegations, no ruling reported).

Pick Exa when, pick Brave when

Pick Exa when:

• Harder questions matter: 31.5% against 16.2% on SealQA.
• You search for people or companies, where Exa has dedicated categories.
• You want a hosted MCP server that needs no key.

Pick Brave when:

• Latency and token cost matter: 591 ms and 1.1k tokens against 2.1 s and 5.2k on SimpleQA.
• You want a $5 list price against Exa's $7 for auto (Exa lite is $4), and a 50 queries a second limit.
• You do not store results, or will buy storage rights.

Grounder lists both providers and can send each question to either; pin one with requested_provider.

How we compared

Criteria: index, price, free tier, accuracy, latency, tokens, rate limit, output, MCP, storage terms, query data and crawler. Vendor facts come from each vendor's own pages, read on 20 October 2026.

Accuracy, latency and tokens come from Grounder's benchmark (as of 20 October 2026): 887 questions from SimpleQA and SealQA, run 8 to 13 October 2026, each provider on its default search, top 10 results within 60 seconds, GLM-5.3-Flash answering from those results alone, graded with OpenAI's SimpleQA grader. It is one run by a vendor that also sells access to both providers. Grounder's routing was tuned on these same searches; the provider rows are plain default searches. Method and live tables: /benchmarks.

Other tests disagree on who leads. Artificial Analysis (19 October 2026) scores Exa higher, 80 against 75. AIMultiple (13 May 2026, from a December 2025 snapshot) ranked Brave first (14.89, 669 ms) and Exa third (14.39, about 1.2 s) and called the top four statistically equal. Exa's own benchmark, run by Exa from 29 July to 2 August 2026, reports people search 72.0% against 44.4% and company search 61.8% against 35.9%, with Brave ahead on citation precision (0.328 against 0.259); Exa says the two are "much closer" on general web queries. See also the best search API for AI agents.

FAQ

Which returns better results for AI agents, Exa or Brave?

It depends on the test. Exa led Grounder's run and Artificial Analysis. Brave led AIMultiple, within a statistical tie. Exa's own benchmark, which Exa ran, shows its lead is largest on people and company search.

How do Exa and Brave prices compare?

Exa auto is $7 per 1,000 searches and Exa lite $4; Brave's Search plan is $5. At 100,000 searches that is about $700 for auto and $500 for Brave before free credits.

Is Brave faster than Exa?

Yes in every test cited here. Grounder measured 591 ms against 2.1 s median search on SimpleQA; AIMultiple measured 669 ms against about 1.2 s.

Can I store Brave Search API results?

Not by default. Brave's terms bar storing or caching results beyond transient use and bar training AI models on them. Storage rights need a plan that includes them; its price is not public.

Do Exa and Brave both have MCP servers?

Both are in the official MCP Registry. Exa runs a hosted server that works without a key. Brave publishes a local server you run yourself, with a brave_llm_context tool.

Next step

Your first 1,000 Grounder searches are free, up to 100 a day. No card needed. Add https://api.grounder.net/mcp to your client and sign in with Google, GitHub or Apple, or read the Docs.