Exa MCP server
Exa's official server gives agents neural web search and clean full-page content built for LLMs.
Exa MCP is the official server from Exa, a search engine designed for AI rather than humans. Its web search returns clean, ready-to-use content instead of a list of blue links, and a fetch tool pulls the full text of a known URL, so an agent gets material it can reason over directly. An advanced search tool adds fine control over domains, dates, and content options for retrieval-heavy workflows.
It is available two ways: a hosted remote endpoint at https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp over Streamable HTTP, and a local stdio package run with npx. Either way an EXA_API_KEY authenticates the request (passed as an env var locally or an x-api-key header remotely), and the key unlocks production rate limits beyond the free tier.
Quick install
Copy-paste configs are provided for all 8 supported clients. Pick your client below.
Add to ~/.claude.json
{
"mcpServers": {
"exa": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Bearer <EXA_API_KEY>"
}
}
}
}claude mcp add --transport http exa https://mcp.exa.ai/mcpAvailable tools
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| web_search_exa | Searches the web for any topic and returns clean, ready-to-use content (enabled by default). |
| web_fetch_exa | Gets the full content of a specific webpage from a known URL (enabled by default). |
| web_search_advanced_exa | Advanced web search with full control over filters, domains, dates, and content options (opt-in). |
Required configuration
- EXA_API_KEYRequired
Exa API key used to authenticate requests and raise rate limits.
What you can do with it
Research with clean content
An agent searches and gets readable page content back, so it can synthesize an answer without a separate scraping step.
Targeted source retrieval
Use advanced search to constrain results to specific domains and date ranges when accuracy of sources matters.
FAQ
- Is it free?
- The server is open source and there is a free tier; an EXA_API_KEY raises rate limits for production use.
- Does it support remote/OAuth?
- It offers a hosted remote endpoint at https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp authenticated with a bearer API key, plus a local stdio package. Authentication is an API key rather than OAuth.