Exa 3.0 is a search API upgrade for agents
Exa says this is its largest search-quality gain, with a $4 Lite tier and highlights that use 95% fewer tokens than full page text.
Official source (opens in a new tab)
Exa's 19 October 2026 post says Exa 3.0 is its largest improvement to search quality, and that it ranks first on every benchmark Exa tested, from public evaluations to coding, finance, and go-to-market intelligence. The same post launches Exa Lite at $4 per 1,000 requests. Exa Auto stays at $7 per 1,000. Lite and Auto share an index. Auto spends more compute on candidate generation, highlights, and ranking.
Dynamic Highlights is generally available at no extra charge. Exa says the new highlighter picks tokens across the whole result set and uses 95% fewer tokens than full page text. The index now includes 1.27 billion ecommerce listings with prices and availability, 211 million local businesses with hours and ratings, plus real-time news, sports, weather, market data, flights, local events, transit, and podcasts. Exa says the API, including Lite, the highlights, and the expanded index, is available today.
Who it's for: developers whose agents search the web through an API.
Fits: Best for Research stays Perplexity. That rank is the product you open for a sourced answer. Exa is the search layer under an agent, and the benchmark claim is Exa's own.