Exa is a search engine built for AI agents. Its official MCP server returns full page content, not ten blue links, and understands requests like "B2B companies that launched an MCP server this quarter". The hosted server works without a key for testing.
Use it two ways. In Claude Code or claude.ai, it's market research on demand: competitors, launches, articles to cite, people to pitch. In your own product, you attach the same hosted URL to your API call and your agent can research every new lead, find candidate profiles or pull cited sources into drafts. For reading one known page in depth, pair it with Firecrawl.
A real run
We asked for SaaS companies that launched an MCP server in the last 90 days. Four searches later Claude had 8, each with a date and the vendor's own announcement.
Alternatives
| MCP | Pick it when | Popularity |
|---|---|---|
| You want search plus extract and crawl in one server, with 1,000 free credits a month | 2.4K ★, official | |
| You want an independent index for web, news, images and video at a low price | 1.5K ★, official | |
| You mostly read known URLs as clean text and want a generous free tier | 0.9K ★, official | |
| You need structured Google results: SERP, Maps, Shopping, News | Official | |
| You want free search with no API key, for testing | 1.5K ★, community |
Watch out
agent_runcosts up to $1 per call at high effort. Cap it, or allow onlyweb_search_exaandweb_fetch_exawith?tools=.
- Paid searches cost $4 to $7 per 1,000 after the free credit. Put per-user limits on deep research loops.
- Pages it returns can carry instructions aimed at your agent. Keep write tools behind human approval in the same session.
Install
In Claude Code:
Terminal
Loading editor...
claude mcp add --transport http exa https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp
It runs keyless with rate limits. A free key gives $10 of searches a month; pass it as
?exaApiKey= or a Bearer header.In your product, attach the hosted URL
https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp with your key as the authorization_token in the Claude API's mcp_servers, or as an Authorization: Bearer header in the AI SDK. Pick tools with ?tools=web_search_exa,web_fetch_exa.More in Top MCP servers for web data.
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