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Exa vs Serper

Exa scores higher on the AgentReady, 92/100 against 56/100. They differ on 18 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.

Serper. Serper is a Google Search API service that provides lightning-fast Google search results in 1-2 seconds at an unbeatable price.

Where Exa is ahead

Exa passes clear canonical domain, public docs discoverable, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs and machine-readable metadata, and Serper 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. Serper misses those.

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

Finally, on operate, machine-readable errors. Serper misses it.

Where Serper is ahead

Serper 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 60. Exa misses nothing; Serper misses clear canonical domain, public docs discoverable, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, machine-readable metadata.

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

Adopt. Exa leads 81 to 55. Exa misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow; Serper misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, official python sdk, cli available.

Operate. Exa leads 88 to 76. Exa misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support; Serper misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support.

Pricing

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

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