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Exa vs Maritime

Exa and Maritime are both developer tools tools. Exa is aimed at developers and enterprise, while Maritime is aimed at developers and small businesses. Only Exa has a free plan.

Exa

Web search and content API built for AI agents and LLM apps

Maritime

Cloud computers for AI agents: sandboxes, desktops and Android phones

PricingFreemiumPaid · $20
Starting priceNot published$20/mo
Free planYesNo
Free trial—7 days
Built forDevelopers, Enterprise, Small businessesDevelopers, Small businesses, Enterprise
Platformswebweb
CountryUS · 2021—
Rating——

Choose Exa if

Developers and AI teams who need a fast, controllable web search and content layer for agents, RAG or research products.

  • Free $10 monthly credit grant with no card required
  • Lite search at $4 per 1,000 requests suits high-volume agents
  • Highlights cut token usage and LLM costs compared with full pages

Look elsewhere if: Non-technical users who want a finished answer engine or chat app rather than an API (Perplexity, You.com).

Choose Maritime if

Startups building AI agents that need sandboxes, desktops or phones per user on a single API and bill.

  • Plan fee comes back as usage credit instead of a platform fee
  • Per-second billing, and sleeping machines pay only for disk
  • Sandboxes, desktops and phones on one API key and one invoice

Look elsewhere if: Teams that only need cheap code sandboxes or headless browsers at large scale (E2B, Daytona, Browserbase).

Exa vs Maritime pricing

Exa

  • Free$0$10 in credits every month plus a one-time $10 onboarding bonus
  • Search Lite$4/1,000 requestsUp to 10 results per request; $1 per 1k extra results
  • Search Auto$7/1,000 requestsUp to 10 results per request; AI summaries $1 per 1k pages
  • Deep Search$12/1,000 requestsdeep-lite (about 4 seconds) and deep (4 to 15 seconds) types
  • Contents$1/1,000 pagesPer content type; prepaid credits, no subscription or minimum

Maritime

  • Starter$20/moFee returned as usage credit; 5 machines awake, no Windows
  • Growth$100/mo$100 usage credit; 25 awake machines, Windows desktops
  • Scale$500/mo$500 usage credit; 60 awake machines, cost per end user
  • Dedicated$5,000/mo500 awake machines, 10,000-sandbox swarms, BAA, named engineer

Exa · Key features

  • Search API with lite, auto, deep-lite and deep types on one independent index
  • Dynamic Highlights that pass only the most relevant tokens to the model
  • Contents API for full page text, highlights and AI summaries
  • Agent API for cited research, list building and enrichment with structured output
  • Coverage of people, companies, code, papers, ecommerce listings and local businesses
  • Monitors for recurring searches and Websets for verified datasets

Cons

  • No flat monthly plan, so spend rises directly with traffic
  • Websets API needs a separate paid Websets plan and credits
  • Benchmark leadership is reported by Exa itself

Maritime · Key features

  • Persistent Agent Boxes that sleep when idle and wake in about a second
  • Disposable sandboxes deleted with their disk when the task ends
  • Linux and Windows Server 2022 desktops for computer-use agents
  • Virtual Android 15 phones where agents can install APKs
  • Per-end-user machines with spend policies and usage reporting
  • One REST API, TypeScript and Python SDKs, CLI and MCP for all machines

Cons

  • Windows desktops require the $100 Growth plan or higher
  • Swarms for large batch runs are invite-only
  • Unused monthly credit does not roll over

Exa vs Maritime: FAQ

Do Exa and Maritime have a free plan?

Exa has a free plan. Maritime has no free plan, a 7-day free trial.

Not sure yet?