TinyFish fetches live. Exa serves from an index.
TinyFish delivers higher top-result accuracy and 93% live fetch coverage. Search and Fetch are free.
How they compare.
Benchmarks, not adjectives.
Every number on this page comes from a reproducible test. Same inputs, every provider, scored the same way.
Search quality
A 250-question sample from OpenAI SimpleQA measured first-result correctness and end-to-end answer rate over the top 10 results.
Production latency
A 1,200-query latency sample compared p50, p99, worst-case timing, and request errors for synchronous search calls.
Fetch coverage
A 45-URL benchmark across common web pages and major news publishers measured usable content coverage and content-to-noise signal.
TinyFish search is more accurate than Exa.
TinyFish's first result is right 28% more often. For agents that act on the top result, that's fewer retries and faster task completion.
TinyFish fetch reaches live pages Exa can miss.
Exa indexes the web and serves from that index. TinyFish fetches live from the source with a real browser. When a site blocks crawlers or isn't indexed, Exa has nothing to return.
When both providers reach a page, signal quality is comparable. The difference is how often they can reach the page at all.
The gap is sharpest on news.
Across 15 articles from five major publishers, Exa reaches only 5. Three publishers are completely out of its index.
TinyFish goes beyond Exa retrieval.
Exa's product is search and content retrieval. When your agent needs to go beyond reading, interact with a page, log into a portal, or navigate a multi-step workflow, Exa's Agent endpoint is in beta with no browser control or credential management. TinyFish's stack was built for this.
Web Agent
Navigates pages autonomously, fills forms, authenticates, and returns structured JSON. 89.9% on Mind2Web.
Stealth Browser
Raw CDP control with engine-level fingerprint management. Goes behind anti-bot protections that block index-based providers entirely.
Credential Vault
Stores logins so your agent accesses authenticated content without exposing passwords.
Search and Fetch are free.
At 10K searches + 10K fetches per month, the bill speaks for itself.
Common questions.
On a 250-question sample from OpenAI's SimpleQA benchmark, TinyFish's first result is correct 49.2% of the time vs Exa's 38.4%: 28% more often.
TinyFish fetches live from the source with a real browser. Exa serves from a pre-built index. On a 45-URL benchmark, TinyFish returns usable content from 42/45 pages (93%) vs Exa's 33/45 (73%).
Exa serves from its index. If a site isn't indexed, blocks crawlers, or was published recently, Exa has nothing to return.
Exa's Agent endpoint is in beta with no browser control or credential management. TinyFish offers a Stealth Browser with engine-level anti-bot protection plus a Credential Vault for authenticated content access.
TinyFish Search and Fetch are free. Exa charges $7 per 1,000 searches and $1 per 1,000 pages for content. At 10,000 searches + 10,000 fetches per month, TinyFish costs $0. Exa costs about $80.