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Exa vs Tavily

Exa scores higher on the AgentReady, 92/100 against 86/100. They differ on 3 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.

Tavily. One secure API for real-time web access.

Where Exa is ahead

Exa passes search discoverable, and Tavily does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds adopt: fast time to first request and copyable quickstart. Tavily 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 is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. Exa leads 100 to 87. Exa misses nothing; Tavily misses search discoverable.

Adopt. Exa leads 81 to 70. Exa misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow; Tavily misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart.

Operate. Both sit at 88/100 here. Exa misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support; Tavily misses retry behavior documented, idempotency support.

Pricing

Exa starts at $0 (free tier with credits) and has a free tier. Tavily starts at $0.008/credit 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 Tavily. Alternatives to each: Exa, Tavily.

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