Scale AI vs Exa
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Scale AI
Human-labeled data, RLHF and model evals — now 49% owned by Meta
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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 | Self-serve: ~1,000 free labeling units + 10,000 free images/month | 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 | 2016 | 2021 |
| Maker | Meta Platforms (49% non-voting stake, 2025) | — |
| Verdict | Scale built the unglamorous plumbing behind a lot of frontier models — labeled data, human-preference (RLHF) pipelines and evaluation/red-teaming — and its SEAL evals earned real respect. The story in 2026 is the Meta en... |
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.