Exa vs Whiteboard
Exa and Whiteboard are both developer tools tools aimed at developers and enterprise. Both have a free plan.
Web search and content API built for AI agents and LLM apps
Open-source desktop canvas for reviewing coding agent work
| Pricing | Freemium | Open source |
| Starting price | Not published | Not published |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Built for | Developers, Enterprise, Small businesses | Developers, Enterprise, Small businesses |
| Platforms | web | macos, windows, linux |
| Country | US · 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 Whiteboard if
Developers who let coding agents write large changes and want a visual, architecture-level way to review them.
- Free and MIT-licensed, runs against local checkouts
- Works with the coding agents teams already use
- Reviews structure and decisions, not only changed lines
Look elsewhere if: Teams that need an editor or a full review workflow with approvals and comments (GitHub, Cursor).
Exa vs Whiteboard 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
Whiteboard
- Open source$0MIT-licensed desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux
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
Whiteboard · Key features
- Agent-drawn sequence and entity relationship diagrams linked to code
- AST-aware semantic diff viewer written in Rust
- Pseudocode summaries of long functions and collapsed test changes
- Decision log of agent traces for auditing autonomous choices
- Code OSS base with VS Code keybindings and LSP support
- Automatic MCP setup for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode
Cons
- Beta software; files cannot be edited inside the app
- Reviews spanning several repositories are poorly supported
- Shared reviews do not update and must be re-shared
Exa vs Whiteboard: FAQ
Do Exa and Whiteboard have a free plan?
Yes, both Exa and Whiteboard have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.