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Exa vs Groq

Exa scores higher on the AgentReady, 92/100 against 64/100. They differ on 13 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.

Groq. Groq is an AI inference company that pioneered the LPU (Language Processing Unit) and provides fast, reliable, affordable inference at scale.

Where Exa is ahead

Exa passes clear canonical domain, and Groq 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, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided and errors and status codes documented. Groq misses those.

And on adopt, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance and cli available. Groq misses those.

Finally, on operate, machine-readable errors, rate-limit behavior predictable and agent compatibility verified. Groq misses those.

Where Groq is ahead

Groq 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.

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 93. Exa misses nothing; Groq misses clear canonical domain.

Understand is whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it. Exa leads 100 to 46. Exa misses nothing; Groq misses openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented.

Adopt. Exa leads 81 to 70. Exa misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow; Groq misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, cli available.

Operate. Exa leads 88 to 47. Exa misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support; Groq misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Exa starts at $0 (free tier with credits) and has a free tier. Groq 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 Groq. Alternatives to each: Exa, Groq.

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