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Adobe vs Exa

Exa scores higher on the AgentReady, 92/100 against 51/100. They differ on 17 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Adobe. Adobe products and services empower developers to create memorable digital experiences through developer creativity

Exa. Exa is a custom search engine built for AIs, offering an API to search the largest index of public web and private information.

Where Exa is ahead

Exa passes public docs discoverable and llms.txt published, and Adobe does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented and limits / constraints documented. Adobe misses those.

And on adopt, self-service signup, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request and copyable quickstart. Adobe misses those.

Finally, on operate, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors and rate-limit behavior predictable. Adobe misses those.

What neither does

Both fail no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, retry behavior documented, idempotency support. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover. Exa leads 100 to 80. Adobe misses public docs discoverable, llms.txt published; Exa misses nothing.

Understand is whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it. Exa leads 100 to 31. Adobe misses openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; Exa misses nothing.

Adopt. Exa leads 81 to 40. Adobe misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart; Exa misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow.

Operate. Exa leads 88 to 53. Adobe misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable; Exa misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support.

Pricing

Adobe does not publish a machine-readable starting price. Exa starts at $0 (free tier with credits) and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Exa clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Adobe and Exa. Alternatives to each: Adobe, Exa.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["adobe", "exa"]}