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Exa MCP Server

Web search and web fetch MCP server that connects AI assistants to Exa's hosted search, crawling, code search, and research capabilities.

by Exa Labs·added 2026-06-05·
Claude CodeClaude Desktop
HarnessClaude CodeClaude Desktop
Review first — review before installing

Open the source and read safety notes before installing.

Safety notes

  • Web search and fetch results may be incomplete, stale, biased, or adversarial; verify important claims against primary sources.
  • Fetching pages can retrieve untrusted web content that may contain prompt injection or malicious instructions.
  • Advanced search filters and domain targeting should be reviewed when used for compliance, hiring, due diligence, or security research.
  • Protect Exa API keys and avoid placing real keys in shared config files, screenshots, logs, or prompts.

Privacy notes

  • Search queries, fetched URLs, tool parameters, page contents, API keys, and surrounding prompts may be sent to Exa and the MCP client.
  • Research topics can reveal product plans, customers, vulnerabilities, hiring activity, legal matters, or personal interests.
  • Review Exa's current data handling, account, and rate-limit policies before using it with proprietary or regulated workflows.

Prerequisites

  • MCP client with hosted or remote MCP support, or mcp-remote for clients that need a stdio bridge.
  • Exa API key for higher limits, production usage, or npm-package configuration.
  • Network access to the Exa hosted MCP endpoint and target webpages.

Schema details

Install type
cli
Troubleshooting
No
Source repository stats
Scope
Source repo
Collection metadata
Estimated setup
5 minutes
Difficulty
beginner
Tool listing metadata
Full copyable content
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "exa": {
      "url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"
    }
  }
}

About this resource

Content

Exa MCP Server connects MCP clients to Exa's web search and page-fetching capabilities. It can be used as a hosted remote MCP server or through the exa-mcp-server npm package with an Exa API key.

The current README and docs emphasize web search, web fetch, and advanced web search tools, with deprecated tool names retained for backwards compatibility. The hosted endpoint has setup examples for Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, OpenCode, Antigravity, Windsurf, Zed, Gemini CLI, v0, Warp, Kiro, Roo Code, and other clients.

Source Review

These sources were reviewed on 2026-06-05. Prefer the live docs for current hosted endpoint behavior, API key options, enabled tools, deprecated tools, rate limits, and client-specific setup.

Features

  • Hosted remote MCP endpoint for clients with remote MCP support.
  • Stdio bridge support through mcp-remote.
  • npm package option for API-key-backed local configuration.
  • web_search_exa for web search with clean result content.
  • web_fetch_exa for fetching full content from known URLs.
  • Optional web_search_advanced_exa for filters, domains, dates, and content options.
  • Setup examples for many MCP clients and AI editors.

Installation

For clients that support hosted MCP endpoints, add Exa directly:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "exa": {
      "url": "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"
    }
  }
}

For clients that need a stdio bridge, use mcp-remote:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "exa": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.exa.ai/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

For npm-package usage, follow the README and provide EXA_API_KEY through your client's environment configuration.

Use Cases

  • Search for recent API documentation, changelog notes, or implementation examples.
  • Fetch and summarize a known webpage from a model-assisted workflow.
  • Ground research prompts in fresh web content before drafting a report.
  • Use advanced search filters to narrow results by domain or recency.
  • Give coding agents live search context without building a custom search tool.

Safety and Privacy

Web content can contain prompt injection, incorrect claims, or malicious instructions. Keep model instructions separate from fetched content and verify important answers against primary sources.

Search queries and fetched URLs can reveal sensitive research topics. Protect API keys and review Exa's current privacy and retention posture before using this server with proprietary, regulated, or customer-specific work.

Duplicate Check

No exa-labs/exa-mcp-server entry or source URL was found in content/mcp. This entry is separate from Tavily, Perplexity, Firecrawl, and other search or crawling MCP servers because it covers Exa's hosted endpoint and npm package.

#search#research#web#crawling#remote

Source citations

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