Exa
Together AI
| Feature | Exa | Together AI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $100/mo | Free only |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.2 / 5 | 4.4 / 5 |
| Best For | ai-developers, researchers, data-scientists, startup-builders | ai-developers, startups, cost-conscious-teams, open-source-advocates |
| Founded | 2022 | 2022 |
| Neural Search | ✓ | ✗ |
| Content Retrieval | ✓ | ✗ |
| Similarity Search | ✓ | ✗ |
| Filtering | ✓ | ✗ |
| Auto Search | ✓ | ✗ |
| Api Access | ✓ | ✗ |
| Inference Api | ✗ | ✓ |
| Fine Tuning | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom Models | ✗ | ✓ |
| Openai Compatibility | ✗ | ✓ |
| Batch Processing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Embeddings | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Exa Pros
- Semantic search beyond keywords
- Clean API for developers
- Returns full page content
- Excellent for AI agent use cases
✗ Exa Cons
- Developer-focused - no consumer product
- Free tier has limited requests
- Results can be unpredictable
✓ Together AI Pros
- Fast inference speeds
- OpenAI-compatible API
- Cheaper than OpenAI for many models
- Custom model fine-tuning
✗ Together AI Cons
- Only open-source models
- Limited compared to full cloud providers
- Newer platform
The Verdict
Exa is built for ai developers and researchers, with a focus on neural-search and content-retrieval. Together AI targets ai developers and startups and leads with inference-api and fine-tuning.
Together AI uses custom enterprise pricing, while Exa starts at $100/mo — a tangible advantage for teams with a fixed budget.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Both tools are a solid fit for ai developers — in those cases, the decision often comes down to workflow style and how your team prefers to organize work.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.