Mendeley vs Exa
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Mendeley
Academic reference manager (Elsevier)
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Exa
Web search and retrieval API built for AI agents and apps
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| RECATOOLS Score | 6.8 / 10 | 7.7 / 10 |
| Capability | ||
| Value for money | ||
| Ease of use | ||
| ASEAN readiness | ||
| API quality | ||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | — | 20,000 search requests per month on the free plan; startup and education grants of $1,000 in free API credits also available |
| Paid from | — | API search billed at $7 per 1,000 requests (as of March 2026 pricing update) |
| Has API | ✗ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | — | — |
| Founded | 2007 | 2021 |
| Maker | — | — |
| Verdict | Mendeley is a long-established, free reference manager from Elsevier for collecting, organising, annotating, and citing research papers, with a desktop reference manager, PDF annotation, and citation plugins for Word. Fo... |
Exa earns its credibility through customer names, not just claims: Cursor, Notion AI, Cognition and OpenRouter all use it in production, and a $250M Series C at a $2.2B valuation (May 2026, led by a16z) backs that up. Th... |
| Full review → | Full review → |
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Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.