DeepInfra vs Exa
Exa scores higher on the AgentReady, 92/100 against 83/100. They differ on 4 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.
What each one is
DeepInfra. DeepInfra is an AI inference cloud that makes it simple to run the latest machine learning models at scale — LLMs, vision, embeddings, image generation, video generation, speech, and more.
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 DeepInfra is ahead
DeepInfra passes agent-compatible signup flow, and Exa does not. That is adopt, whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop.
Where Exa is ahead
Exa passes mcp discoverable, and DeepInfra does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.
It also holds adopt: mcp integration available. DeepInfra misses it.
And on operate, agent compatibility verified. DeepInfra misses it.
What neither does
Both fail no mandatory sales call, 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 87. DeepInfra misses mcp discoverable; Exa misses nothing.
Adopt. Exa leads 81 to 75. DeepInfra misses no mandatory sales call, mcp integration available; Exa misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow.
Operate is whether an agent can run against it in production and recover when a call fails. Exa leads 88 to 71. DeepInfra misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support, agent compatibility verified; Exa misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support.
Pricing
DeepInfra does not publish a machine-readable starting price with no free tier. Exa starts at $0 (free tier with credits) and has a free tier.
Signal by signal
| Signal | DeepInfra | Exa |
|---|---|---|
| AgentReady | 83 | 92 |
| Discovery | 87 | 100 |
| Understanding | 100 | 100 |
| Adoption | 75 | 81 |
| Operability | 71 | 88 |
| Public API | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Unknown | Yes |
| OpenAPI spec | Yes | Yes |
| CLI | Yes | Yes |
| llms.txt | Yes | Yes |
| Self-serve signup | Yes | Yes |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
Which to pick
Exa clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: DeepInfra and Exa. Alternatives to each: DeepInfra, Exa.
An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["deepinfra", "exa"]}