Perigon vs Exa: full comparison for 2026
Quick verdict
Perigon (4.5/5) edges ahead of Exa (4.2/5) overall. Perigon is the better choice for indie developers and startups wanting enriched data at a known price. Exa is the stronger option for RAG and agent developers needing semantic news retrieval. The right pick depends on your budget, how much history you need and whether you need full text.
Perigon vs Exa: head-to-head summary
| Criterion | Perigon | Exa |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2022 | 2021 |
| HQ | Austin, Texas, USA | San Francisco, USA |
| Team size | 11–50 | 51–200 |
| Rating | 4.5 / 5 | 4.2 / 5 |
| Primary differentiator | Entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly | Search by meaning with page text returned in the same request |
| Pricing model | Monthly plans; add-ons for real-time and volume | Pay per request; free monthly credit |
| Entry price | $25/mo | $7 per 1,000 searches |
| Formats & SDKs | REST API, JSON, Python SDK | REST API, JSON, Python SDK |
| Typical uses | AI & LLM apps, Media monitoring, Risk & compliance, Marketing & PR | AI & LLM apps, Research & academia |
Perigon vs Exa: overview
Perigon
Perigon is an Austin, Texas startup founded in 2022 by Joshua Dziabiak and Josh Rickel, backed by a $5 million seed round that LiveOak Ventures led in February 2024. For developers its main draw is that the pricing page tells you what you will pay: Individual at $25 a month for personal use, Startup at $250 with limited commercial rights, and Commercial at $1,250 with real-time data, an SLA and SSO. Every tier returns enriched articles with entities, topics, summaries and story clusters from 230,000+ sources (per company website; independently unverifiable), and Monitors let you save a query and get matches on a schedule. Plan for the delay: below Commercial, data lags by an hour unless you pay for the real-time add-on.
Exa
Exa Labs started in San Francisco in 2021 as Metaphor, founded by Will Bryk and Jeff Wang, and raised an $85 million Series B led by Benchmark in September 2025. It runs its own web index searched by meaning, so a query like "startups cutting cloud costs" can match articles that never use those words. Set the category to news and ask for contents, and one request returns cleaned text you can drop into a prompt. As of 2026 search costs $7 per 1,000 requests with contents for the top 10 results included, and new accounts start with $20 of credit. SDKs cover Python and TypeScript, and an official MCP server plugs it into agent tools. It is a search engine at heart, so expect weaker coverage of small regional outlets and fuzzier publication dates than a dedicated news API gives.
Features: Perigon vs Exa
| Capability | Perigon | Exa |
|---|---|---|
| Full article text | ✓ | ✓ |
| Historical archive | ✓ | ✗ |
| NLP enrichment | ✓ | ✗ |
| Story/event clustering | ✓ | ✗ |
| Official SDK | ✓ | ✓ |
| Streaming or webhooks | ✓ | ✗ |
| Free access | ✓ | ✓ |
Formats and SDKs: Perigon vs Exa
| Format / SDK | Perigon | Exa |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Python SDK | ✓ | ✓ |
| Node.js SDK | ✓ | ✓ |
| Webhooks | ✓ | N/A |
| WebSocket | N/A | N/A |
| MCP server | N/A | ✓ |
| S3/bulk delivery | N/A | N/A |
| BigQuery | N/A | N/A |
Pricing comparison: Perigon vs Exa
| Criterion | Perigon | Exa |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $25/mo | $7 per 1,000 searches |
| Pricing model | Monthly plans; add-ons for real-time and volume | Pay per request; free monthly credit |
| Access models | Free trial, Monthly plans, Enterprise contract | Free tier, Pay-as-you-go, Enterprise contract |
| Price transparency | Public price | Public price |
| Price tier | Budget | Budget |
Who each API suits: Perigon vs Exa
| Dimension | Perigon | Exa |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer type | Individuals to enterprise | Individuals to enterprise |
| Typical uses | AI & LLM apps, Media monitoring, Risk & compliance | AI & LLM apps, Research & academia |
| Example use cases | A startup MVP that needs commercial rights from the first month. Alerting on a brand or topic without building a scheduler. | Grounding chatbot answers in recent articles. Research agents gathering background on a topic. |
| How you get access | Free trial | Free tier |
Perigon vs Exa: pros and cons
| Perigon | |
|---|---|
| + | The cheapest plan already includes enrichment, which most rivals reserve for higher tiers |
| + | Monitors replace a cron job and a diffing script with a saved query |
| + | Python and Node SDKs, plus webhooks for pushed results |
| + | The license explains what you may do with the structured data, which saves a round of legal questions |
| - | Data lags by an hour below the $1,250 plan unless you buy real-time |
| - | The Startup tier caps you at 10,000 requests a month |
| - | Republishing full article text is outside the license |
| Exa | |
|---|---|
| + | Finds relevant coverage that keyword queries miss |
| + | Contents come with results, so there is no second fetch-and-parse step |
| + | An MCP server and Python and TypeScript SDKs are official |
| + | Pay per request with no monthly minimum |
| - | No source taxonomy, sentiment or story clusters |
| - | Publication dates come from crawl metadata and can be off |
| - | Monitoring thousands of queries a day gets expensive |
Who should choose Perigon?
A typical fit: a startup MVP that needs commercial rights from the first month.
Entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly. Paid access starts at $25/mo. Typical uses: AI & LLM apps, Media monitoring, Risk & compliance, Marketing & PR.
Who should choose Exa?
A typical fit: grounding chatbot answers in recent articles.
Search by meaning with page text returned in the same request. Paid access starts at $7 per 1,000 searches. Typical uses: AI & LLM apps, Research & academia.
Decision matrix: Perigon vs Exa
| Your situation | Recommended choice |
|---|---|
| You want to start free before paying | Both |
| Your budget is at the lower end | Exa |
| You need full article text in the response | Both |
| You need years of historical news | Perigon |
| You want an official SDK | Both |
| You are wiring news into an LLM agent | Both |
Use case fit: Perigon vs Exa
| Use case | Perigon fit | Exa fit | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI & LLM apps | Strong | Strong | Both equally |
| Media monitoring | Strong | Limited | Perigon |
| Risk & compliance | Strong | Limited | Perigon |
| Marketing & PR | Strong | Limited | Perigon |
| Research & academia | Limited | Strong | Exa |
Verdict: Perigon vs Exa
Perigon (4.5/5) is the stronger overall choice as a news data source. Entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly.
Exa (4.2/5) is worth a look if you need research agents gathering background on a topic. If your situation matches that, Exa is a competitive option.
Related comparisons
Perigon vs Exa FAQ
Is Perigon better than Exa?
Perigon (4.5/5) scores higher overall, but "better" depends on your use case. Perigon's strongest advantage: the cheapest plan already includes enrichment, which most rivals reserve for higher tiers. Exa's strongest advantage: finds relevant coverage that keyword queries miss.
How do Perigon and Exa differ in pricing?
Perigon: monthly plans; add-ons for real-time and volume, with paid access from $25/mo. Exa: pay per request; free monthly credit, with paid access from $7 per 1,000 searches. Both offer some free access for testing.
Which is better for enterprise: Perigon or Exa?
Both sell enterprise contracts. Neither carries licensed publisher content, so check copyright terms before republishing anything.
What are the main differences between Perigon and Exa?
What sets Perigon apart: Entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly. What sets Exa apart: search by meaning with page text returned in the same request. They also differ on entry price ($25/mo vs $7 per 1,000 searches) and typical uses (AI & LLM apps, Media monitoring vs AI & LLM apps, Research & academia).
Verify all details directly with each API before making a decision.