ExaFreemium
A search API built for AI agents rather than humans — structured outputs, token-efficient highlights, and sub-200ms responses.
AI Infrastructure comparison
Exa vs Together AI
Pricing, pros, cons, and ideal use cases — side by side.
Together AIPaid
A cloud platform for fast, cost-efficient inference and fine-tuning of open-weight models at production scale.
At a glance
| Exa | Together AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | FreemiumFree trial via the dashboard; usage-based pricing published on the pricing page rather than the homepage. | PaidUsage-based per-token pricing. Dedicated endpoints and fine-tuning are priced separately. |
| Category | AI Infrastructure | AI Infrastructure |
| Ideal for | Teams building research and enrichment agentsDevelopers replacing scrape-and-parse pipelinesCoding agents needing current documentationAnyone paying too many tokens for web content | Teams running open-weight models in productionCost-sensitive, high-volume inference workloadsEnterprises fine-tuning private model variants |
Pros & cons
Exa
Pros
- Roughly 90% token reduction versus fetching full pages
- Structured JSON output against your own schema
- Sub-180ms latency
- Zero data retention plus SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA coverage
- Used in production by Cursor, Cognition, and HubSpot
Cons
- Usage pricing is not on the homepage — model your volume first
- Another metered dependency in the agent loop
- Index coverage differs from Google; verify recall on your domain
- Overkill if you only need occasional lookups
Together AI
Pros
- Fast, cost-efficient open-model inference
- Wide and current model selection
- Fine-tuning and dedicated endpoints available
- Often cheaper than closed APIs at scale
Cons
- Open models shift evaluation and safety onto you
- Quality varies by model and task
- Not a managed governance platform on its own
Which should you choose?
Exa is the lighter-weight option (Freemium), while Together AI sits higher on the pricing ladder (Paid). Exa is built around teams building research and enrichment agents; Together AI leans more toward teams running open-weight models in production. Shortlist the one whose strengths line up with your biggest constraint.