Scira vs Exa

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

Scira Open-source AI search with citations — now has a $15/mo Pro tier Visit Exa Web search and retrieval API built for AI agents and apps Visit
RECATOOLS Score 6.5 / 10 7.7 / 10
Capability 6 8
Value for money 8 7
Ease of use 7 8
ASEAN readiness 6 6
API quality 0 8
Pricing Open Source 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

Scira remains one of the cleanest open-source takes on cited AI search: AGPL-3.0 licensed, over 7,000 GitHub stars, self-hostable, and genuinely useful as a reference for anyone who wants to see how a Perplexity-style an...

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.