Official Exa MCP for fast web search and crawling when the workflow is search-first rather than page-ops-first.
62/100
Trust
4.0K+
Stars
11
Evidence
4.0 MB
Repo size
Videos
Reviews, tutorials, and comparisons from the community.
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Repo health
1d ago
Last push
44
Open issues
303
Forks
19
Contributors
Editorial verdict
#6 in product-business-development, #2 research tool. Best for semantic discovery ('find companies like X'). npm declining (9.3K/wk, down from 11.2K). AIMultiple benchmark tested extraction, not discovery — 23% undersells Exa's actual strength.
Source
GitHub: exa-labs/exa-mcp-server
Public evidence
Exa Fast claims 'most accurate search API sub-500ms.' Exa Deep adds agentic multi-search. New maxAgeHours for freshness control. Free MCP tier launched. If independently verified, closes latency gap with Brave.
Strongest MCP adoption in the search category. 5x more stars than Brave's MCP server (781). Suggests strong developer preference for Exa's MCP integration.
Scored 5/10. Praised setup simplicity and MIT license. Criticized lack of documentation on prompts, resources, and tools. No sampling support.
Step-by-step tutorial for using exa-mcp-server with Claude Desktop to access LinkedIn profiles via MCP. No sponsorship disclosure.
Tested Exa MCP with Claude Code for a day and found it 'quite good,' praising search quality and speed. Covers pricing, installation, and practical usage.
Listed as Top Pick. Released Nov 27, 2024. Ranked #52 globally with estimated 706K visitors. Independent aggregator positioning.
412pts is exceptional traction for a search API launch (top 0.1% of HN posts). Launched as The web as a database — neural search engine for AI.
Agent Score 14.39 (#3 of 8). Statistically tied with Brave and Firecrawl in the top tier. Independent benchmark validation.
Nvidia investment signals infrastructure-grade credibility. $700M valuation validates market position. Exa serves web search to thousands of companies including Cursor.
Exa scores 81% vs 71% on complex retrieval, runs 2-3x faster, and adds people, company, and code search that Tavily lacks.
23% MCP success rate vs Firecrawl's 83%. 15s avg vs Firecrawl's 7s. MCP-specific problem — Exa's core API performs better when consumed directly. Timeout and Cloudflare issues on hosted endpoint (GitHub #6878).
How does this compare?
See side-by-side metrics against other skills in the same category.
Where it wins
Fast search-first workflow
Official provider support
Good fit for discovery and initial market mapping
Where to be skeptical
Less differentiated when you need operational follow-through
Weaker than operating-surface servers for actually running the business
Closed-source, cloud-only — no self-hosting option
Pricing ~10x more expensive than Firecrawl at comparable usage
Ranking in categories
Know a better alternative?
Submit evidence and we'll run the full pipeline.
Similar skills
Crawl4AI
83Free, open-source web scraping (Apache-2.0). 62K stars, actively maintained (v0.8.5, 2026-03-18), 372K weekly PyPI downloads. Best open-source alternative to Firecrawl.
SearXNG
78Privacy-first, self-hosted meta-search engine aggregating 70+ upstream engines. Zero cost, zero API keys, full data sovereignty.
PostHog MCP
73Official PostHog MCP — product analytics, feature flags, experiments, error tracking, and usage insights via MCP. Integrated into PostHog monorepo Jan 2026. #5 all-time globally on PulseMCP (5.7M visits).
Firecrawl MCP Server
70Official Firecrawl MCP for scraping, extraction, and deep research workflows. 50K+ npm weekly downloads, backed by $14.5M Series A.
Raw GitHub source
Constrained peek so you can sanity-check the source material without leaving the site.
Connect AI assistants to Exa's search capabilities: web search, code search, and company research.
Connect to Exa's hosted MCP server:
https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp
Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"
}
}
}
Add to .vscode/mcp.json:
{
"servers": {
"exa": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"
}
}
}
claude mcp add --transport http exa https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp
Add to your config file:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"]
}
}
}
codex mcp add exa --url https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp
Add to your opencode.json:
{
"mcp": {
"exa": {
"type": "remote",
"url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp",
"enabled": true
}
}
}
Open the MCP Store panel (from the "..." dropdown in the side panel), then add a custom server with:
https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp
Add to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"serverUrl": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"
}
}
}
Add to your Zed settings:
{
"context_servers": {
"exa": {
"url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"
}
}
}