--- source_url: "https://www.socialcrawl.dev/vs/exa" title: "SocialCrawl vs Exa: Social Search API for AI Agents | SocialCrawl" mirrored_at: 2026-08-14T01:34:05.712Z host: www.socialcrawl.dev cited_in_42a: true mirror_canonical: "https://index.42a.ai/www.socialcrawl.dev/vs/exa" --- > **Original source:** https://www.socialcrawl.dev/vs/exa [ Compare SocialCrawl with Exa ](#comparison) Exa neural-searches the open web and returns the most relevant pages; SocialCrawl searches 27 social platforms and returns the posts, creators, and comments themselves. Most agent stacks run both. 14 platforms — Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok and more GET /v1/search/everywhere fans out across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, and Reddit, npx socialcrawl-mcp installs in Claude Code and Cursor. Facts last verified June 15, 2026 Searching 48 platforms in parallel Feature comparison ## What is the difference between SocialCrawl and Exa? Exa is neural web search for AI, it finds the web pages most semantically relevant to a query. SocialCrawl is social search: it fans out across 27 social platforms and returns structured posts, creators, and comments, not blue links. Exa finds pages about a topic; SocialCrawl finds the social activity itself. ### Unified schema One field name across 48 platforms. Write one parser, not 13. SocialCrawlYes ExaNo ### MCP server \`npx socialcrawl-mcp\` on the MCP Registry. Works in Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf. SocialCrawlYes ExaYes ### Visual Explorer Paste any URL, see rich cards and export as code. No API key needed to browse. SocialCrawlYes ExaNo Feature comparison ## How does SocialCrawl compare to Exa, feature by feature? Fifteen dimensions side by side, verified 2026-06-15 against exa.ai, including the rows where Exa is genuinely ahead on open-web search. Feature SocialCrawl Exa Result type What a search returns Structured social objects, posts, profiles, comments, across 48 platforms Open-web page results (URLs, page contents, AI-trained highlights) Engagement metadata (likes, views, comments, shares) On every social object, normalized Not applicable: web pages, not social posts Creator / profile-level data Yes: profiles, follower counts, creator stats across platforms No: returns pages about people, not platform profiles Search surface Index searched 14 social platforms (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, Reddit, and more) The open web (neural/embeddings index) Cross-platform social search in one call GET /v1/search/everywhere: RRF fusion + LLM rerank + clustering, flat 20 credits Open-web neural search: not a per-platform social fan-out Streaming results Sync JSON or typed SSE chunks, partial-on-timeout Sync JSON responses Schema & data quality Unified response schema Enforced at the gateway: same field names on every platform Page-shaped responses: no per-platform social schema to unify Computed fields (engagement\_rate, estimated\_reach, content\_category, language) On every response Not offered: web-page metadata only Token-efficient content highlights Optional comment + transcript enrichment per source Yes: AI-trained highlights, strong for RAG context budgets Agent readiness MCP server socialcrawl-mcp on npm + MCP Registry: social-shaped tools (profiles/posts/comments) Ships an MCP server: open-web neural search tools Structured outputs + grounded citations Normalized social objects per call Agent API with structured outputs + grounded web citations Pricing & billing Billing model Credits that never expire (GBP): one social request is 1 credit; /search/everywhere is 20 Per request (USD): ~$0.007/Search, $0.001/page of contents Free tier 100 credits on signup, no card Up to 20,000 requests/month, no card: genuinely generous Non-technical tooling Visual data explorer Paste a URL, see rich social cards, export as code: no API key needed to browse Developer playground for neural-search queries (web results, not social cards) Trust & enterprise Compliance posture Early-stage: launched April 2026 SOC 2 Type II, Zero Data Retention, SSO; $250M Series C; Cursor, HubSpot, Databricks Internationalization Localized site English + Korean, native Korean copy + hreflang English-first Result type ## Does Exa return social media posts, or web pages about them? Exa returns web pages, the open-web documents most semantically relevant to your query. SocialCrawl returns the social objects themselves: the actual TikTok posts, Instagram profiles, YouTube videos, Reddit threads, and X replies, normalized into one schema. - Search for a trend on Exa and you get articles and pages discussing it; search on SocialCrawl and you get the posts and creators driving it. - Every SocialCrawl result carries engagement metadata, likes, views, comments, shares, plus computed engagement\_rate and estimated\_reach. - Exa is excellent at what it does: if your agent needs to read the open web, its neural ranking finds pages a keyword engine would miss. - Need a page about the topic too? Pair them: Exa for the open web, SocialCrawl for the social layer underneath it. Your agent stops re-scraping TikTok and Instagram after a web search, the posts arrive structured on the first call. Universal search ## How do you search across TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit in one call? SocialCrawl's GET /v1/search/everywhere fans out across 14 social platforms in parallel, fuses the results with weighted RRF, reranks them with an LLM, and clusters them, one flat 20-credit call. Exa's index is the open web, so cross-platform social fan-out isn't its job. - Base sources include Reddit, X, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Hacker News, GitHub, Threads, Pinterest, and more: up to 17 in hashtag mode. - Results stream as typed SSE chunks or arrive as sync JSON, with optional comment and transcript enrichment per source. - Exa fans out across the web index it built: different surface, different job; it isn't returning native per-platform social results. - One query reaches every platform at once, so you skip writing and rate-limiting a dozen separate scrapers. Ask once and get fused, reranked social results from a dozen platforms, instead of orchestrating a dozen integrations yourself. One schema ## Why does one normalized schema matter for social data? Exa returns page content for open-web documents, not platform-specific social fields, so there's no social schema to normalize. SocialCrawl enforces one schema at the gateway, so a TikTok and an Instagram follower count land in the same field across 48 platforms. - Same field names, ISO-8601 timestamps, and integer counts across every platform: you write one parser, not one per platform. - Computed fields arrive on every response: engagement\_rate, estimated\_reach, content\_category, language, your agent reasons instead of parsing. - Need the upstream platform shape? ?format=raw returns it alongside the unified one. - Because Exa is open-web, its responses are page-shaped: there's nothing per-platform to collapse, which is exactly why it isn't a social-data source. A six-platform monitoring product maintains one parser and one fix path, not six field maps that drift independently. Time to first data ## How fast can you preview real social data without writing code? SocialCrawl ships a Visual Explorer: paste a profile or post URL and see rich cards, then copy the call as cURL or Python, no API key needed to browse. Exa offers a developer playground, but it returns open-web search results, not social profile or post cards. - 100 free credits land on signup, no card: enough to pull real profiles and feeds and read the normalized schema yourself. - A non-technical teammate can answer 'can we get this TikTok data?' from a link, before any engineer opens an editor. - Exa's playground is genuinely useful for testing neural-search queries: it's just answering 'which pages,' not 'which posts and creators.' - See your social data before writing a single line: the Explorer renders the payload so you scope the integration up front. From 'never heard of SocialCrawl' to querying live profile data in under two minutes, no integration written yet. 01 Paste URL 02 See rich card 03 Export or copy code `fetch("/v1/...")` Pricing side by side ## How do Exa pricing and SocialCrawl credits compare? Different billing models for different jobs. Exa rates live-verified 2026-06-15 from exa.ai/pricing; SocialCrawl bills in GBP with credits that never expire, Exa bills per request in USD. Different jobs, different meters 42 social platforms in one search GET /v1/search/everywhere, flat 20 credits per call, fused and reranked across 17 sources. Verified 2026-06-15 SocialCrawlCredits never expire Free£0100 credits on signup, no card Starter / Search£152,500 credits, never expire, flat per-endpoint costs Growth / Deep Search£4920,000 credits, never expire, flat per-endpoint costs Pro£299150,000 credits, never expire Enterprise—Custom: volume pricing, SSO, SLAs ExaCredit packs Free$0Up to 20,000 requests/month, no card: genuinely generous Starter / Search—Pay per request: ~$0.007 per Search request, $0.001 per page of contents· $0.007 / Search request Growth / Deep Search—Deep Search ~$0.012/request; Agent runs from ~$0.025/run· $0.012 / Deep Search request Pro—Usage scales linearly per request; volume discounts via Enterprise Enterprise—Custom: SOC 2 Type II, Zero Data Retention, SSO, dedicated support The meters aren't like-for-like: Exa bills per open-web request in USD ($0.007/Search), SocialCrawl bills per social request as a monthly GBP credit. They price different jobs, open-web retrieval vs social objects, so size each against your real workload. [See full pricing](https://www.socialcrawl.dev/pricing) Who it's for ## Who is SocialCrawl built for? Teams that need the social activity itself: agent builders adding a social-data tool, alt-data and quant teams tracking creators and engagement, and developers shipping social features this quarter. ### Choose SocialCrawl if: - AI agent builders adding a social-data toolnpx socialcrawl-mcp returns normalized social objects in Claude Code and Cursor, your agent reasons over posts and creators, not raw pages. - Alt-data and quant teams tracking signalEngagement\_rate and estimated\_reach arrive computed across 48 platforms, so creator and post signals are analysis-ready on arrival. - Teams searching social, not the open webOne /v1/search/everywhere call fans out across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, and Reddit, the posts themselves, fused and reranked. - Developers shipping social features this quarterOne GET returns structured data in the response, and the Explorer shows the payload before you write a line. 100 free credits, no card. - Korean-market teamsSocialCrawl ships native Korean copy and hreflang across the site, Exa's surfaces are English-first. ### Choose Exa if: Exa is the right call for several real jobs, and for most agent stacks it sits alongside SocialCrawl rather than against it. - Your agent needs to read the open webNeural ranking surfaces the most semantically relevant pages, not the most SEO-optimized, a genuinely better primitive than a keyword engine. - You're building RAG over web documentsToken-efficient page contents and AI-trained highlights fit tight LLM context budgets, exactly what RAG pipelines want. - You run coding or research agentsSearching docs, repos, changelogs, and Stack Overflow with low-latency neural retrieval is squarely Exa's strength. - You need open-web breadth, not social depthIf the answer lives on the web at large rather than inside social platforms, Exa's index is the right surface. Already running Exa for open-web retrieval and not yet touching social data? Keep it, and add SocialCrawl when your agent starts re-scraping TikTok or Instagram by hand. Bookmark this for when that happens. ## Frequently asked questions Can't find what you're looking for? [Talk to our team](https://www.socialcrawl.dev/contact) or ask the AI agent below Exa is neural web search for AI, it returns the open-web pages most semantically relevant to a query. SocialCrawl is a social search and data API: it fans out across 27 social platforms and returns structured social objects, posts, creators, comments, with computed engagement fields. Exa finds pages about a topic; SocialCrawl finds the social activity itself. Most agent stacks run both. Ask AI about SocialCrawl Ready to try? ## Search the social layer Exa can't reach 100 free credits, no card, enough to run /v1/search/everywhere and read real posts, creators, and comments yourself.