Metaso 秘塔AI搜索 vs Exa

A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.

Metaso 秘塔AI搜索 Chinese AI search engine with academic depth and pay-per-query API Visit Exa Web search and retrieval API built for AI agents and apps Visit
RECATOOLS Score 7.3 / 10 7.7 / 10
Capability 7 8
Value for money 8 7
Ease of use 8 8
ASEAN readiness 5 6
API quality 6 8
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 2021
Maker
Verdict

Metaso is one of the more usable AI search products to come out of China: genuinely ad-free, strong academic-database coverage (it pulls from both Chinese and English scholarly sources, including PubMed), and a deep-rese...

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...

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Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.