Exa (web search)

Use Exa to search the web from an Agent or a Flow. Exa is available as the built-in Exa tool for Agents and as the Exa Search API provider for the AI Search Flow step. Exa uses neural and keyword search and returns results with optional summaries, highlights, and full page text.

Set up Exa

You can use Exa without an Exa account. Without your own key, Exa calls use a Runtype platform key, and Runtype tracks their cost as platform-key spend. For how platform keys are billed and limited, see Platform keys vs. BYOK.

To use your own Exa account, follow these steps:

1. Create an account at Exa.
2. Get an Exa API key.
3. In Runtype, go to Settings > Integrations.
4. Find Exa.
5. In Exa API Key, enter your key.
6. Click Save Key.

To go back to the platform key, click Remove Key in the Exa section.

Add Exa to an Agent

To add Exa to an Agent, follow these steps:

1. Open your Agent.
2. In the tools strip, click Add tool. The tool picker opens.
3. In the Web search category, select Exa.
4. Close the picker and save the Agent.

To attach Exa in an Agent definition, add builtin:exa to tools.toolIds:

{
  "tools": {
    "toolIds": ["builtin:exa"]
  }
}

You can list builtin:exa in the same tools configuration as runtime tools that you define for a single request. For details, see Runtime tools.

Tool parameters

When an Agent calls Exa, the model supplies these parameters. If the model leaves out an optional parameter, the tool uses the listed default.

Tool results

The tool returns the search query, the Exa results, and a result count. Each item in results includes fields such as title, url, publishedDate, author, and, when requested, summary, highlights, and text:

{
  "success": true,
  "query": "open-source vector databases",
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "Example article",
      "url": "https://example.com/article",
      "publishedDate": "2026-05-01T00:00:00.000Z",
      "summary": "A comparison of open-source vector databases.",
      "highlights": ["..."]
    }
  ],
  "resultCount": 1
}

Use Exa in a Flow

To search with Exa in a Flow, follow these steps:

1. Add an AI Search step.
2. In Search for, enter the query. You can use variables, for example {{topic}}.
3. In the provider list, select Exa Search API.
4. In returning, set the number of results.

The Exa Search API option appears only when Exa is available to your account.

The step’s Exa Options settings control what Exa returns:

• search type: Auto (Recommended), Neural Search, or Keyword Search.
• Content Options: turn on Include full page text, Include AI summary, or Include highlights. All three are off by default.
• category filter: limit results to one Exa category, such as research paper.

The Only search these domains and Exclude these domains filters also apply to Exa. The Date Range fields don’t apply to Exa. To filter an Exa search by date, set exaStartPublishedDate and exaEndPublishedDate in the step definition.

Step configuration

In a Flow definition, an AI Search step that uses Exa has type: "search" and provider: "exa":

{
  "type": "search",
  "name": "Research topic",
  "config": {
    "provider": "exa",
    "query": "{{topic}}",
    "outputVariable": "searchOutput",
    "exaSearchType": "auto",
    "exaNumResults": 10,
    "exaContents": { "summary": true, "highlights": true }
  }
}

The step accepts these Exa fields:

Step output

The step writes an object with query, results, citations, and metadata to its output variable. Each result includes title, url, content, publishedDate, author, and score, plus summary, highlights, and text when you request them. Each citation includes id, url, title, source (the site’s hostname), publishedDate, and author.

To use the results in a later Prompt step, reference the output variable:

Summarize these search results and cite each source:
{{searchOutput.results}}
Sources: {{searchOutput.citations}}

By default, a failed AI Search step doesn’t stop the Flow. It writes { "error": "...", "results": [] }, or the step’s default value, to the output variable. To stop the Flow instead, change the step’s error handling. For details, see Flow step types overview.

Troubleshooting

The following table lists common Exa errors. The Agent tool and the Flow step word the missing-key error differently, and the Agent tool adds the prefix Exa search failed: to most errors.

Use cases

Use Exa for the following tasks:

• Research current information across web sources.
• Verify claims against web sources.
• Find reference material for content creation.
• Find companies or contacts for lead generation.
• Research sites that block automated requests. Exa retrieves content through its own infrastructure, so it can work when Fetch URL requests are blocked.

Next steps

Continue with these pages:

• Built-in tools: add Exa and other tools to Agents and Flows.
• Agent and flow templates: start from a template that uses Exa.
• Flow step types overview: learn about the AI Search step and other steps.
• Firecrawl (web scraping): extract content from pages that Exa finds.
• What are Agents?: build an Agent that uses Exa.
• Using crawl, search, and paginate-api steps: crawl a website, run an AI search, and page through an API.