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Exa vs OpenAI

Exa scores higher on the AgentReady, 92/100 against 72/100. 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.

OpenAI. OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company focused on developing frontier intelligence models and making them accessible through products like ChatGPT and an API platform.

Where Exa is ahead

Exa passes search discoverable, clear canonical domain, clear product positioning, public docs discoverable and llms-full.txt / full agent docs, and OpenAI 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, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented and limits / constraints documented. OpenAI misses those.

And on adopt, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, official typescript sdk and official python sdk. OpenAI misses those.

Finally, on operate, canonical workflow succeeds, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, rate-limit behavior predictable, observable execution and agent compatibility verified. OpenAI misses those.

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 is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. Exa leads 100 to 67. Exa misses nothing; OpenAI misses search discoverable, clear canonical domain, clear product positioning, public docs discoverable, 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 67. Exa misses nothing; OpenAI misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. OpenAI leads 88 to 81. Exa misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow; OpenAI misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, official typescript sdk, official python sdk.

Operate. Exa leads 88 to 67. Exa misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support; OpenAI misses canonical workflow succeeds, 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. OpenAI does not publish one 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: Exa and OpenAI. Alternatives to each: Exa, OpenAI.

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