Exa vs Linkup
Exa (formerly Metaphor) pioneered neural embedding search -- you describe what you want and the index returns semantically matched pages rather than keyword hits. Linkup takes a different angle: licensed premium publishers curated into a RAG-ready index. Both claim better-than-keyword quality; they get there differently.
50 free credits · no credit card
Exa
$10/mo Starter / Scale tier per-call
Strengths
- Neural embedding ranking
- Find-similar page queries
- Good at discovering long-tail content
- Content endpoint returns cleaned text
Weaknesses
- Ranking quality variable outside tech and academic content
- No Reddit or YouTube
- Credit math gets fuzzy at scale
Linkup
Free / ~$0.005 per search / Enterprise
Strengths
- Licensed premium corpus
- Citation-grade provenance
- EU-hosted
Weaknesses
- Narrow source mix outside Europe
- No MCP server
- Per-call pricing
Feature-by-feature comparison
Verdict
Exa earns its keep when you're hunting for semantically similar pages the keyword index won't surface -- think competitive research, academic-adjacent queries, or tech blog discovery. Linkup earns its keep when a publisher license matters. For generalist agent search with breadth, neither is the optimal pick alone.
Consider Scavio instead
Scavio adds the platform layers neither covers: Reddit threads, YouTube transcripts, Amazon and Walmart listings. Pair Scavio with Exa if you need semantic long-tail discovery plus multi-platform data on one bill.
Frequently Asked Questions
Exa (formerly Metaphor) pioneered neural embedding search -- you describe what you want and the index returns semantically matched pages rather than keyword hits. Linkup takes a different angle: licensed premium publishers curated into a RAG-ready index. Both claim better-than-keyword quality; they get there differently.
Exa is priced at $10/mo Starter / Scale tier per-call. Linkup is priced at Free / ~$0.005 per search / Enterprise. The better value depends on your usage volume and feature requirements.
Scavio adds the platform layers neither covers: Reddit threads, YouTube transcripts, Amazon and Walmart listings. Pair Scavio with Exa if you need semantic long-tail discovery plus multi-platform data on one bill.
Some teams use both tools for different parts of their pipeline. However, a unified API like Scavio can replace the need for multiple subscriptions by providing search, content extraction, YouTube, and Amazon data from a single endpoint.
Try Scavio for free
50 free credits on signup. Structured data from Google, YouTube, Amazon, Walmart, and Reddit. No credit card required.