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Exa vs Google Gemini

Exa scores higher on the AgentReady, 92/100 against 35/100. They differ on 22 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

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

Google Gemini. Gemini is Google's AI assistant and conversational AI model.

Where Exa is ahead

Exa passes clear canonical domain, clear product positioning, public docs discoverable, llms.txt published and llms-full.txt / full agent docs, and Google Gemini does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented and limits / constraints documented. Google Gemini misses those.

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

Finally, on operate, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, rate-limit behavior predictable, observable execution and agent compatibility verified. Google Gemini 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 53. Exa misses nothing; Google Gemini misses clear canonical domain, clear product positioning, public docs discoverable, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs.

Understand is whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it. Exa leads 100 to 23. Exa misses nothing; Google Gemini misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Exa leads 81 to 40. Exa misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow; Google Gemini 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.

Operate. Exa leads 88 to 24. Exa misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support; Google Gemini misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, observable execution, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Exa starts at $0 (free tier with credits) and has a free tier. Google Gemini does not publish one.

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: Exa and Google Gemini. Alternatives to each: Exa, Google Gemini.

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