A free, local alternative to Exa
Web search, page contents and research for agents — fused from 18 engines and reranked on your machine, with no per-request bill.
wigolo and Exa, side by side
Exa is a hosted AI search API built on its own web index, with endpoints for search, page contents, deep search, answers, monitors and an agent, billed per request.
wigolo is a free, open-source server that gives any AI agent the same web jobs from your own machine: search across 18 engines, fetch, crawl, extract, a persistent local cache, find-similar, research and autonomous gathering. There is no account and no metered bill.
| wigolo | Exa | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Your machine, or your own server | Their cloud |
| Account / API key | None | Required |
| Cost per query | $0, unlimited | Metered (see pricing below) |
| Where your queries go | Straight to the search engines it queries and the pages it fetches — no vendor in between, no account attached | To the vendor, tied to your account |
| Persistent local memory | Every page lands in a local cache with keyword + semantic re-query, offline | — |
| Evidence format | Verbatim excerpts pinned to byte-offset source spans, with an explainable score per result | Results with snippets or page content |
| Agent surfaces | MCP (stdio + HTTP), REST, CLI, TypeScript & Python SDKs, LangChain, CrewAI, LlamaIndex, Vercel AI SDK | Hosted API, SDKs, MCP server |
| Pricing | Free | $10 in free credits a month. Search $7 per 1,000 requests, contents $1 per 1,000 pages, deep search $12–15 per 1,000 |
| Search index | Live results from 18 engines, fused with rank fusion and reranked by an on-device ML model | Exa's own web index |
| Page contents | fetch, with full markdown or evidence excerpts | Contents endpoint |
| Research | research: decomposes a question, searches in parallel, returns a cited brief | Deep search / agent |
Exa details as published by Exa, checked September 2026: Exa pricing. Check their site for current terms.
Moving from Exa
Each Exa endpoint has a wigolo tool that does the same job. Wire wigolo into your agent over MCP and it discovers these tools on its own; frameworks and scripts use the REST API or the TypeScript and Python SDKs.
| Exa | wigolo tool | Notes |
|---|---|---|
search | search | category, include_domains, date filters, search_depth |
contents | fetch | or include_full_markdown on search results |
answer | search | format: "answer" for a synthesized answer |
deep search / agent | research / agent | |
monitors | watch | |
similar pages | find_similar | across everything in your local cache |
Full parameters for every tool: tool reference.
Questions
Does wigolo have its own search index like Exa?
wigolo searches the live web through 18 engines at once, fuses the results and reranks them on-device, then keeps every page it reads in a local semantic cache — so the pages that matter to you become instantly re-searchable, offline, over time.
Can it return page content with search results?
Yes. Search results carry verbatim excerpts with source spans by default; set include_full_markdown for full page bodies, or call fetch on any URL.
Does wigolo need an API key?
No. Search, fetch, crawl, extract and the cache run keyless on your machine. An LLM key (or a local model) is optional and only adds answer synthesis to research and agent runs.
Which agents does it work with?
Any MCP client. npx wigolo init --agents=<agent> wires Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed and Antigravity in one command; frameworks and self-hosted automations use the REST API or the SDKs.
Is it really free?
Yes — wigolo is open source (AGPL-3.0) with no paid tier and no metered bill. It runs on hardware you already have, so there is nothing to charge per query. Companies that want to embed it without AGPL obligations can take a commercial license.