API Reference

Answer

Get an LLM answer to a question informed by Exa search results. Fully compatible with OpenAI’s chat completions endpoint - docs here. /answer performs an Exa search and uses an LLM to generate either:

A direct answer for specific queries. (i.e. “What is the capital of France?” would return “Paris”)
A detailed summary with citations for open-ended queries (i.e. “What is the state of ai in healthcare?” would return a summary with citations to relevant sources)

The response includes both the generated answer and the sources used to create it. The endpoint also supports streaming (as stream=True), which will returns tokens as they are generated.

POST

answer

curl -X POST 'https://api.exa.ai/answer' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR-EXA-API-KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "query": "What is the latest valuation of SpaceX?",
    "text": true
  }'

{
  "answer": "$350 billion.",
  "citations": [
    {
      "id": "https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/11/spacex-valued-at-350bn-as-company-agrees-to-buy-shares-from-employees",
      "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/11/spacex-valued-at-350bn-as-company-agrees-to-buy-shares-from-employees",
      "title": "SpaceX valued at $350bn as company agrees to buy shares from ...",
      "author": "Dan Milmon",
      "publishedDate": "2023-11-16T01:36:32.547Z",
      "text": "SpaceX valued at $350bn as company agrees to buy shares from ...",
      "image": "https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7cfee7e84b24b73c97a079c402642a333ad31e77/0_380_6176_3706/master/6176.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=71ebb2fbf458c185229d02d380c01530",
      "favicon": "https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/icons/homescreen/apple-touch-icon.svg"
    }
  ],
  "costDollars": {
    "total": 0.005,
    "breakDown": [
      {
        "search": 0.005,
        "contents": 0,
        "breakdown": {
          "keywordSearch": 0,
          "neuralSearch": 0.005,
          "contentText": 0,
          "contentHighlight": 0,
          "contentSummary": 0
        }
      }
    ],
    "perRequestPrices": {
      "neuralSearch_1_25_results": 0.005,
      "neuralSearch_26_100_results": 0.025,
      "neuralSearch_100_plus_results": 1,
      "keywordSearch_1_100_results": 0.0025,
      "keywordSearch_100_plus_results": 3
    },
    "perPagePrices": {
      "contentText": 0.001,
      "contentHighlight": 0.001,
      "contentSummary": 0.001
    }
  }
}

Get your Exa API key

Authorizations

x-api-key

string

header

required

API key can be provided either via x-api-key header or Authorization header with Bearer scheme

Body

application/json

query

string

required

The question or query to answer.

Minimum length: 1

Example:

"What is the latest valuation of SpaceX?"

stream

boolean

default:false

If true, the response is returned as a server-sent events (SSS) stream.

text

boolean

default:false

If true, the response includes full text content in the search results

model

enum<string>

default:exa

The search model to use for the answer. Exa passes only one query to exa, while exa-pro also passes 2 expanded queries to our search model.

Available options:

exa,

exa-pro

Response

200

application/json

answer

string

The generated answer based on search results.

Example:

"$350 billion."

citations

object[]

Search results used to generate the answer.

costDollars

object

costDollars.total

number

Total dollar cost for your request

Example:

0.005

costDollars.breakDown

object[]

Breakdown of costs by operation type

costDollars.perRequestPrices

object

Standard price per request for different operations

costDollars.perPagePrices

object

Standard price per page for different content operations

curl -X POST 'https://api.exa.ai/answer' \
  -H 'x-api-key: YOUR-EXA-API-KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "query": "What is the latest valuation of SpaceX?",
    "text": true
  }'

{
  "answer": "$350 billion.",
  "citations": [
    {
      "id": "https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/11/spacex-valued-at-350bn-as-company-agrees-to-buy-shares-from-employees",
      "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/11/spacex-valued-at-350bn-as-company-agrees-to-buy-shares-from-employees",
      "title": "SpaceX valued at $350bn as company agrees to buy shares from ...",
      "author": "Dan Milmon",
      "publishedDate": "2023-11-16T01:36:32.547Z",
      "text": "SpaceX valued at $350bn as company agrees to buy shares from ...",
      "image": "https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7cfee7e84b24b73c97a079c402642a333ad31e77/0_380_6176_3706/master/6176.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=71ebb2fbf458c185229d02d380c01530",
      "favicon": "https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/icons/homescreen/apple-touch-icon.svg"
    }
  ],
  "costDollars": {
    "total": 0.005,
    "breakDown": [
      {
        "search": 0.005,
        "contents": 0,
        "breakdown": {
          "keywordSearch": 0,
          "neuralSearch": 0.005,
          "contentText": 0,
          "contentHighlight": 0,
          "contentSummary": 0
        }
      }
    ],
    "perRequestPrices": {
      "neuralSearch_1_25_results": 0.005,
      "neuralSearch_26_100_results": 0.025,
      "neuralSearch_100_plus_results": 1,
      "keywordSearch_1_100_results": 0.0025,
      "keywordSearch_100_plus_results": 3
    },
    "perPagePrices": {
      "contentText": 0.001,
      "contentHighlight": 0.001,
      "contentSummary": 0.001
    }
  }
}

Getting Started

API Reference

RAG Quick Start Guide

Concepts

Admin

Answer

Get your Exa API key

Authorizations

Body

Response