Staxly

Exa vs Supabase

AI search API for developers — neural + keyword hybrid for agents
vs. The open source Firebase alternative with Postgres

Exa websiteSupabase website

Pricing tiers

Exa

Free Tier
1,000 requests/month at no cost. Access to all core products.
Free
Pay-as-you-go
Usage-based per endpoint. No monthly minimum.
$0 base (usage-based)
Startup + Education Grants
$1,000 in free credits for qualifying projects.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom. High-volume, custom datasets, rate limits, SLA, dedicated support.
Custom
Exa website

Supabase

Free
Perfect for experiments. Projects pause after 7 days inactivity.
Free
Pro
Production-ready. Usage-based overages apply.
$25/mo
Team
For teams; includes SOC2 attestation and priority support.
$599/mo
Enterprise
Custom quotas, HIPAA compliance, dedicated support.
Custom
Supabase website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing free on Exa vs free on Supabase.

MetricExaSupabase
bandwidth gb5 GB/month
db storage gb0.5 GB
edge invocations500000 invocations/month
file storage gb1 GB
mau50000 users/month
realtime messages2000000 messages/month

Features

Exa · 13 features

  • Answer APIQuery → direct answer with citations.
  • Category FilterFilter to news, research papers, company, github, tweet, pdf, financial report,
  • Contents APIRetrieve cleaned full-text + summaries from URLs.
  • Custom Datasets (Ent)Enterprise: private indexing of your own corpus.
  • Deep Reasoning SearchAdds LLM reasoning on top of Deep Search.
  • Deep SearchMulti-hop iterative search for complex queries.
  • Find SimilarGiven a URL, find semantically similar pages.
  • HighlightsExtract most-relevant passages per result.
  • LivecrawlFetch pages on-demand (bypass cache) for freshness-critical queries.
  • MCP ServerOfficial Exa MCP for Claude Code / Cursor / Agents.
  • MonitorsScheduled recurring search → alerts on new results.
  • Search APINeural + keyword web search for agents. Returns ranked URLs.
  • SummariesLLM-generated page summaries.

Supabase · 24 features

  • AuthenticationComplete JWT-based auth: passwords, magic links, OTP, OAuth, SSO, phone, MFA.
  • Backups & PITRAutomatic daily backups + Point-in-Time Recovery (WAL-G). 14-day default PITR wi
  • Compute InstancesUpgradeable DB compute: Micro, Small, Medium, Large. Affects CPU, RAM, and conne
  • Connection PoolingSupavisor pooler: Session mode (persistent) and Transaction mode (serverless). D
  • Cron JobsScheduled recurring jobs via pg_cron. Trigger DB functions, edge functions, or H
  • Custom DomainsConfigure custom hostname for API endpoints with SSL certificate management.
  • Database WebhooksAsync HTTP callbacks on INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE via pg_net extension.
  • Edge FunctionsTypeScript (Deno runtime) functions deployed globally at the edge. Supports secr
  • Full-Text SearchPostgreSQL native FTS: to_tsvector, to_tsquery, GIN indexes, fuzzy matching, wei
  • Image TransformationsOn-the-fly resize, crop, quality (20-100), WebP auto-format. Smart CDN caching.
  • Log DrainsRoute all stack logs to HTTP, Datadog, Loki, Sentry, S3, OTLP, or Axiom. Up to 2
  • Metrics API~200 Prometheus-compatible Postgres metrics. OpenTelemetry export to Datadog, Gr
  • Network RestrictionsCIDR allowlist for database access. Multiple IP ranges supported. Pro+ plan.
  • OAuth 2.1 ServerUse Supabase Auth as OAuth provider. Custom Access Token Hooks for claim injecti
  • pgvectorStore and search vector embeddings in Postgres. Supports HNSW/Flat indexes, cosi
  • PostgreSQL DatabaseFull PostgreSQL per project: SQL editor, table editor, CSV import, 50+ extension
  • PostgreSQL Extensions50+ pre-installed extensions: uuid-ossp, pgvector, pg_cron, plv8, pgtap, pg_net,
  • Preview BranchesEphemeral or persistent DB branches for isolated testing. Git integration, auto-
  • QueuesExactly-once message queues built on pgmq. Stored in Postgres with configurable
  • Read ReplicasAsync read-only replicas in multiple regions. Geo-routing, replication lag monit
  • RealtimeWebSocket subscriptions for DB changes (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE), broadcast, and pr
  • Row Level SecuritySQL-native access control; policies auto-filter rows based on auth.uid() / auth.
  • SSL EnforcementRequire TLS for all DB connections. Configurable: required, preferred, disabled.
  • StorageFiles, Analytics (Iceberg), and Vector buckets with global CDN (285+ cities) and

Developer interfaces

KindExaSupabase
CLISupabase CLI
SDKexa-js, exa-pyC# SDK, Flutter SDK, JavaScript SDK, Kotlin SDK, Python SDK, Swift SDK
RESTExa REST APIManagement API, REST API (PostgREST)
GRAPHQLGraphQL (pg_graphql)
MCPExa MCP ServerSupabase MCP Server
OTHERExa DashboardRealtime (WebSocket)
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Exa and Supabase are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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