Exa vs Valyu
A side-by-side comparison of Exa and Valyu, two Search tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Exa | Valyu |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Search | Search |
| Pricing (differs) | FREEMIUM | PAID |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Platforms | API | API |
| Model support | Model-agnostic | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | Exa Labs | Valyu |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
Exa
Built for AI/research retrieval: neural embedding search plus find-similar, where general search APIs key off keywords.
- Semantic 'find pages like this' retrieval
- Purpose-built for RAG and agents
- Returns full page content, not just links
- Free tier to test
- Index narrower than Google-scale crawlers
- Keyword queries can lag classic search
- Usage-priced costs scale with volume
Valyu
Returns structured, extracted content from licensed paywalled papers, filings and patents — not just links most search APIs stop at.
- Searches proprietary and paywalled sources
- Full extracted content, ready for RAG
- Deep research API for multi-step tasks
- Flat per-task pricing
- No free tier
- Early-stage company
- Developer / API-only
- Premium data sources cost more
When to pick which
Both cover Unified search and Cited answers.
Pick Exa if you need Web scraping and Structured extraction.
- Web scraping (secondary capability)
- Structured extraction (secondary capability)
Pick Valyu if you need MCP server, Document parsing (structured), and Web research agent.
- MCP server (secondary capability)
- Document parsing (structured) (secondary capability)
- Web research agent (primary capability)
They also differ on:
- Pricing
- FREEMIUM · PAID