Optimize Exa costs through tier selection, sampling, and usage monitoring. Use when analyzing Exa billing, reducing API costs, or implementing usage monitoring and budget alerts. Trigger with phrases like "exa cost", "exa billing", "reduce exa costs", "exa pricing", "exa expensive", "exa budget".
npxskills add jeremylongshore/claude-code-plugins-plus-skills--skill exa-cost-tuningLoading…
Reduce Exa API costs through strategic search type selection, result caching, query deduplication, and usage monitoring. Exa charges per search request with costs varying by search type and content retrieval options.
| Factor | Higher Cost | Lower Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Search type | deep-reasoning > deep > neural | keyword < fast < instant |
| numResults | 10-100 results | 3-5 results |
| Content retrieval | Full text + highlights + summary |
| Metadata only (no content) |
| Content length | maxCharacters: 5000 | maxCharacters: 500 |
| Live crawling | livecrawl: "always" | Cached content (default) |
import Exa from "exa-js";
const exa = new Exa(process.env.EXA_API_KEY);
// Define cost tiers per use case
const SEARCH_PROFILES = {
// Cheapest: metadata-only keyword search
"autocomplete": { type: "instant" as const, numResults: 3 },
// Low cost: fast search with minimal content
"quick-lookup": { type: "fast" as const, numResults: 3 },
// Medium: balanced search for RAG
"rag-context": {
type: "auto" as const,
numResults: 5,
text: { maxCharacters: 1000 },
},
// Higher cost: deep research
"deep-research": {
type: "neural" as const,
numResults: 10,
text: { maxCharacters: 3000 },
highlights: { maxCharacters: 500 },
},
};
async function costAwareSearch(
query: string,
profile: keyof typeof SEARCH_PROFILES
) {
const config = SEARCH_PROFILES[profile];
if ("text" in config || "highlights" in config) {
return exa.searchAndContents(query, config);
}
return exa.search(query, config);
}
import { LRUCache } from "lru-cache";
const searchCache = new LRUCache<string, any>({
max: 5000,
ttl: 3600 * 1000, // 1-hour TTL
});
async function cachedSearch(query: string, opts: any) {
const key = `${query.toLowerCase().trim()}:${opts.type}:${opts.numResults}`;
const cached = searchCache.get(key);
if (cached) return cached;
const results = await exa.searchAndContents(query, opts);
searchCache.set(key, results);
return results;
}
// Typical RAG cache hit rate: 40-60%, directly cutting costs in half
function deduplicateQueries(queries: string[]): string[] {
const seen = new Set<string>();
return queries.filter(q => {
const normalized = q.toLowerCase().trim().replace(/\s+/g, " ");
if (seen.has(normalized)) return false;
seen.add(normalized);
return true;
});
}
// Before batch processing, deduplicate
const uniqueQueries = deduplicateQueries(allQueries);
console.log(`Deduped: ${allQueries.length} → ${uniqueQueries.length} queries`);
// Typical dedup rate: 20-40% for batch processing
// Neural search: best for semantic/conceptual queries (more expensive)
// Keyword search: best for specific terms/names (cheaper, faster)
function selectCostEffectiveType(query: string): "neural" | "keyword" | "auto" {
// Use keyword for exact lookups
if (query.match(/^https?:\/\//)) return "keyword"; // URL lookup
if (query.match(/^[A-Z][a-z]+ [A-Z]/)) return "keyword"; // Proper nouns
if (query.includes('"')) return "keyword"; // Quoted terms
// Use neural for conceptual queries
if (query.split(" ").length > 5) return "neural";
return "auto"; // Let Exa decide for ambiguous queries
}
set -euo pipefail
# Check API key usage
curl -s https://api.exa.ai/v1/usage \
-H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" | \
python3 -c "
import json, sys
d = json.load(sys.stdin)
print(f'Searches today: {d.get(\"searches_today\", \"N/A\")}')
print(f'Monthly total: {d.get(\"searches_this_month\", \"N/A\")}')
print(f'Monthly limit: {d.get(\"monthly_limit\", \"N/A\")}')
" 2>/dev/null || echo "Usage endpoint not available"
// Application-level budget tracking
class ExaBudgetTracker {
private searchCount = 0;
private dailyLimit: number;
constructor(dailyLimit = 1000) {
this.dailyLimit = dailyLimit;
}
async search(exa: Exa, query: string, opts: any) {
if (this.searchCount >= this.dailyLimit) {
throw new Error(`Daily Exa budget exceeded (${this.dailyLimit} searches)`);
}
this.searchCount++;
return exa.search(query, opts);
}
getUsage() {
return {
used: this.searchCount,
remaining: this.dailyLimit - this.searchCount,
utilization: `${((this.searchCount / this.dailyLimit) * 100).toFixed(1)}%`,
};
}
}
keyword or fast for exact lookups instead of neuralnumResults to 3-5 for most use cases (default is 10)highlights instead of full text when snippets suffice| Issue | Cause | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly limit hit early | Uncached batch queries | Add caching (40%+ savings) |
| High cost per result | numResults too high | Reduce to 3-5 for most use cases |
| Budget spike from batch | No deduplication | Deduplicate before batch execution |
402 NO_MORE_CREDITS | Account balance exhausted | Top up at dashboard.exa.ai |
For performance optimization, see exa-performance-tuning. For reliability, see exa-reliability-patterns.
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Create or update AgentSkills. Use when designing, structuring, or packaging skills with scripts, references, and assets.
Set up and use 1Password CLI (op). Use when installing the CLI, enabling desktop app integration, signing in (single or multi-account), or reading/injecting/running secrets via op.
CLI to manage emails via IMAP/SMTP. Use `himalaya` to list, read, write, reply, forward, search, and organize emails from the terminal. Supports multiple accounts and message composition with MML (MIME Meta Language).