Exa Search MCP
Neural search across the open web, companies, news, people (LinkedIn), and academic papers, plus a deep-research mode that runs multi-step query plans. 4,371 GitHub stars and 83 commits on main in the last 30 days.
“Neural search across the open web, companies, news, people (LinkedIn), and academic papers, plus a deep-research mode that runs multi-step query plans. 4,371 GitHub stars and 83 commits on main in the last 30 days, top cadence in the search category. Exa is the highest-quality general-purpose AI search MCP available at time of review.”
INSTALL THIS SERVER
{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"exa-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"EXA_API_KEY": "<your-exa-key>"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"exa-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"EXA_API_KEY": "<your-exa-key>"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"exa-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"EXA_API_KEY": "<your-exa-key>"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"exa-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"EXA_API_KEY": "<your-exa-key>"
}
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"exa-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"EXA_API_KEY": "<your-exa-key>"
}
}
}
}
8 TOOLS AVAILABLE
OUR ASSESSMENT
- 4,371 GitHub stars and MIT licence.
- 83 commits on main in the last 30 days.
- Category filters (company, news, people) improve relevance over generic web search.
- Deep-research mode runs multi-step query plans asynchronously; agent polls for results.
- Tool restriction via --tools flag for scoped agent configurations.
- Token isolation: separate API keys per tool category for cost attribution.
- Browser fallback for sources that require JS rendering.
- Exa API pricing is per-request; deep-researcher tasks can be expensive.
- LinkedIn data quality depends on Exa public scraping; private profiles are unavailable.
- Category-specific filter restrictions: some filters like includeDomains are scoped to certain categories.
EXA_API_KEY grants full Exa account access. Use token isolation for production: separate keys for web search (cheap) and deep-research (expensive) for cost attribution and rate-limit independence.
Agents that need neural search with category-aware filters; research workflows where the agent kicks off a deep-research task and polls for completion; coding agents that need source context via get_code_context_exa; teams running production agents who want per-tool API key isolation for cost attribution.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
ADOPTION METRICS
// Reading this4,371 stars on the exa-labs/exa-mcp-server repo. 83 commits on main in the last 30 days lead the search category.
// Reading thisFirst-ranked in search on commit cadence, star count, and tool surface combined.
SOURCES & VERIFICATION
We don't take any single directory's word for it. Before scoring, we cross-reference 5 public MCP sources, install the server ourselves against the clients we cover, and record when we last re-verified.
The same server, 5 different lenses. We reconcile these signals into our editorial score, which is why our number sometimes diverges from a directory-aggregate star count.
| Source | Their rating | Their star count | Their downloads | Last synced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AutomationSwitch This page | 4.6editorial | 4,371 | — | MAY 3, 2026 |
| PulseMCP | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 3, 2026 |
| MCP.so | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 3, 2026 |
| Glama | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 3, 2026 |
| Smithery | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 3, 2026 |
| Official MCP Registry | — unrated | unavailable | unavailable | MAY 3, 2026 |
// Counts are directory-reported; we don't adjust them. Discrepancies usually come from different snapshot times or star-caching.
OTHER SEARCH MCP SERVERS
Brave Search MCP
Official Brave Search MCP covering web, local, video, image, news, and AI summary. 965 GitHub stars and 31 commits on main in the last 30 days. Privacy-respecting search index distinct from Google.
Tavily MCP
Tavily Search and Extract APIs as MCP tools, with both local stdio and hosted streamable transports at https://mcp.tavily.com/mcp. 1,891 GitHub stars and 14 commits on main in the last 30 days.
DuckDuckGo Search MCP
Community-built DuckDuckGo Search MCP server with web search, content fetching, and intelligent text extraction. Built-in rate limiting protects against DuckDuckGo blocking. SafeSearch and region configuration via env vars.
DISCUSS YOUR
MCP REQUIREMENTS.
Evaluating a server, scoping an internal deployment, or working out whether MCP is the right fit at all. Start the conversation and we will point you at the right piece of the ecosystem.