siftq
Sign inSearch API Playground
Sign inSearch API Playground

SiftQ vs
Exa.

SiftQ pairs neural retrieval with hard-tuned verticals (people, code, filings) and an EU edge presence Exa does not currently offer.

Try the SiftQ API playgroundVisit Exa ↗
TL;DR

Exa is the obvious safe choice; SiftQ wins when EU latency, verticalization, or cost-per-query genuinely matters to your workload.

SiftQ

Why pick us

You serve EU users, your agent is latency-sensitive, or you need a specialized vertical index (people search, code search, SEC filings) without writing your own.

  • ✓Lower latency p50
  • ✓EU region for GDPR
  • ✓Verticalized indexes (people / code / filings)
  • ✓~40% cheaper at scale
Exa

Why pick them

You want the safest, most established choice and brand-name diligence reasons matter. Workload is US-centric.

  • •Best-in-class brand
  • •Largest neural index
  • •Mature SDKs
  • •Battle-tested on agent workloads
Side by side

At a glance.

Preview · numbers below are illustrative pending audited benchmarks

SiftQExa
p50 latency · ranked174ms210ms
FRAMES accuracy56.1%54.4%
Seal-0 long-tail accuracy38.4%36.0%
EU region (Frankfurt)yesno
Brand awareness in HN/Twittergrowinghigh
Years in market<13+
PricingFree tier 1,000 queries/mo, $0.003/query thereafter.Tiered. Starts ~$10/mo, $0.005/query for neural search.
Exa's positioning

Exa popularized neural / embedding-based search for AI agents and has the deepest brand recognition in the category.

SiftQ's positioning

SiftQ pairs neural retrieval with hard-tuned verticals (people, code, filings) and an EU edge presence Exa does not currently offer.

Also evaluating

Other comparisons.

retrieval-api
SiftQ vs Tavily
Search API built specifically for RAG / agent use cases.
search-engine
SiftQ vs Brave Search API
Independent index from the Brave browser team.
aggregator
SiftQ vs Serper
Cheap, fast Google SERP wrapper.

Try it on your
actual workload.

The truest benchmark is your own queries. SiftQ's free tier gives you 1,000 / month, no credit card.

Open the SiftQ API playgroundSee pricing