You ask Exa "Find me competitor pricing pages in the SaaS space." It returns 10 structured results in 180ms. Clean, fast, accurate within its index.

Now you need to actually visit those pricing pages, click through tier dropdowns, extract the numbers, and compare them in a spreadsheet. Exa found the pages. But it can't read them — at least not the dynamic, JavaScript-rendered, sometimes authenticated parts. This is where the two tools start working together — and why many teams end up using both.

Exa is a semantic search API that returns structured results from its own index of billions of web pages. TinyFish is a web agent platform that runs AI agents on remote browsers to navigate, interact with, and extract data from live websites.

They operate at different layers of the same stack — and many teams end up using both.

Quick Reference: Which Tool Fits Your Situation?

1. You need fast search results optimized for LLM consumption → Exa
2. You need to interact with pages (click, login, scroll, extract) → TinyFish
3. You need semantic search with content bundled in results → Exa
4. You need data from behind login walls or anti-bot protection → TinyFish
5. You're building a RAG pipeline from public web content → Exa
6. You're automating multi-step workflows across live sites → TinyFish
7. You need sub-200ms latency for search queries → Exa
8. You need structured JSON from complex, dynamic pages → TinyFish

What Each Product Actually Does

Exa maintains its own semantic search index — billions of web pages with neural embeddings. When you search, Exa doesn't proxy Google; it queries its own index using semantic similarity, returning results with titles, URLs, snippets, and optionally full page content bundled in the response. Backed by $85M in Series B funding (Benchmark, Lightspeed, Nvidia) at a $700M valuation, Exa powers search for Notion, Cursor, AWS, Databricks, and Groq.

Key capabilities: semantic search, keyword search, content extraction bundled with results, date and domain filtering (1,200+ domains), Research API for deep research tasks, and sub-200ms latency on Exa Instant.

TinyFish runs AI agents on cloud-hosted browsers. You describe a task — "Go to this pricing page, extract all tier names and prices as JSON" — and TinyFish navigates the site, handles dynamic content, anti-bot protection, and authentication, then returns structured output.

Key capabilities: multi-step browser workflows, authenticated site access, anti-bot stealth, parallel execution (up to 1,000 agents), structured JSON output, and a unified platform with Search, Fetch, Browser, and Agent APIs.

The fundamental distinction: Exa searches the indexed web. TinyFish operates on the live web.

Where Exa Wins

Speed. Sub-200ms on Exa Instant. Even Deep search completes in ~3.5 seconds. For applications that need real-time search results — chatbots, research assistants, content recommendation engines — this latency is 50–300x faster than a browser agent workflow. TinyFish's Search API runs at ~488ms P50 (real-time Google proxy), and agent-based workflows take 10–60 seconds. If your pipeline needs answers in under a second, Exa is the only option here.

Semantic search quality. Exa's proprietary neural index understands meaning, not just keywords. A query like "companies building AI infrastructure for regulated industries" returns semantically relevant results even when pages don't contain those exact words. Try searching for "startups solving healthcare data interoperability" — Exa returns companies working on FHIR integration and EHR data normalization, even if those pages never use the word "interoperability." This kind of conceptual matching is a genuine technological differentiation that keyword-based search (including Google) often misses.

Content bundled with results. Exa returns up to 10 results with full page content included — one API call gets you both the URLs and the text. TinyFish's Search API returns URLs and metadata; extracting content requires a separate Fetch or Agent call. For RAG pipelines that need content fast, this bundling eliminates an entire step.

Research API. Exa's Research and Research Pro endpoints handle multi-step research workflows within their index — the system decomposes a complex question, runs multiple queries, cross-references sources, and returns a synthesized answer. A question like "What are the top 5 AI infrastructure companies by funding, with their latest product launches?" gets answered in one call. On TinyFish, this would require multiple sequential agent calls across multiple sites, at 10–60 seconds per step and higher total cost. For research that can be answered from publicly indexed content, Exa's approach is faster and significantly cheaper.

Ecosystem integrations. Native integrations with LangChain, LlamaIndex, Cursor, and major AI frameworks. Exa is the default search provider in many LLM tool chains — if you're building on these frameworks, Exa plugs in with minimal code.

Where the Gap Opens

Anything behind authentication. Exa indexes the public web. If your data requires logging in — internal dashboards, subscription-only content, enterprise SaaS portals — Exa can't reach it. TinyFish's agent logs in, navigates, and extracts as part of the workflow.

Dynamic, JavaScript-rendered content. Exa's index captures page content at crawl time. If a pricing page loads tier details via JavaScript after the initial render, or if product availability changes hourly, Exa's index may be stale. TinyFish renders the live page in a real browser and extracts current data.

Interactive workflows. Exa finds pages. TinyFish operates on them. If your task requires clicking filters, filling forms, paginating through results, or completing multi-step transactions, only a browser agent can do it.

Anti-bot protected sites. Sites behind Cloudflare, PerimeterX, or DataDome aren't fully represented in any search index. TinyFish's stealth layer handles these sites directly.

Pricing Comparison

Exa

Exa's pricing is per-request. Content extraction is bundled with search results — no separate call needed. Date and domain filtering available on all tiers.

TinyFish

TinyFish also has a Search API (1 credit = 2 searches) and Fetch API (1 credit = 15 fetches) for lighter tasks. The Agent is for when you need full browser interaction.

The cost comparison

For 1,000 simple search queries with content: Exa costs $7. TinyFish Search API costs ~$7.50 (500 credits). Nearly identical for pure search.

For 100 workflows that require visiting a page, interacting with it, and extracting structured data: Exa can't do this at all — it's a search API, not a browser agent. TinyFish handles it at $0.015/step × estimated 5–15 steps per workflow = $7.50–$22.50.

The pricing isn't really comparable because the products do different things. Exa is the cheapest way to search the indexed web. TinyFish is the cheapest way to operate on the live web. The question is which layer your use case requires.

When to Use Both

This is the most common pattern for teams with complex data needs:

Exa for discovery. Search Exa's index to find relevant URLs, company pages, documentation sites, competitor landing pages. Fast, cheap, semantically accurate.

TinyFish for extraction and interaction. Take Exa's URLs and send them to TinyFish's agent for deep extraction — clicking through tabs, expanding sections, handling dynamic content, extracting structured JSON.

The pipeline: Exa Search → filter URLs → TinyFish Agent → structured data → your database

This is more efficient than using TinyFish for discovery (slower, more expensive for pure search) or using Exa for extraction (limited to indexed content, can't interact).

Try It on Your Real Use Case

If your workflow starts with "find pages about X" — start with Exa. It's fast and well-priced for search.

If your workflow continues with "then go to those pages and extract Y" — that's where TinyFish picks up. 500 free steps, no credit card.

👉 Start free on TinyFish

FAQ

Can Exa extract data from JavaScript-rendered pages?

Exa returns content from its index, which includes some rendered content. But if a page loads data dynamically after the initial render (pricing calculators, real-time inventory, interactive widgets), the indexed version may not include it. TinyFish renders the live page in a real browser and extracts current content.

Does TinyFish have a search API?

Yes. TinyFish's Search API proxies real-time Google results as structured JSON (~488ms P50). It's comparable to Exa for basic search but uses a different approach: real-time Google proxy vs Exa's proprietary semantic index. Exa's semantic search quality is generally stronger for exploratory queries.

Which is better for building RAG pipelines?

For ingesting large volumes of public web content into a vector database, Exa is more efficient — search + content in one call, sub-200ms, optimized for LLM token consumption. For RAG sources that require authentication or dynamic content extraction, TinyFish fills the gap.

Can I use Exa's results as input for TinyFish?

Yes, and this is a common pattern. Search Exa for relevant URLs, then send those URLs to TinyFish's Agent or Fetch API for deeper extraction. The combination gives you Exa's search quality with TinyFish's browser-level data access.

How does Exa's pricing compare at scale?

Exa at $7/1K requests is significantly cheaper for pure search than any browser-based approach. At 100K searches/month, Exa costs ~$700. TinyFish's Search API at the same volume would cost roughly $750. The costs are similar for search — the divergence happens when you need to go beyond search into interaction and extraction.

Related Reading

• What Is a Web Agent? The Complete Guide (2026)
• TinyFish vs Browserbase: Cold Start, Pricing, and Real-World Performance
• TinyFish vs Firecrawl: When Extraction Needs More Than a Crawl Endpoint
• Why 90% of the Internet Is Invisible