Difficult web research
Investigate questions where one search query is unlikely to find enough evidence.
Independent tool overview
Deep Max at a glance
Deep Max is Exa's highest-compute agentic search system, designed to answer difficult web questions through a frontier model, many parallel Exa searches and compact source retrieval.
Visit the official Deep Max site ↗
- Product type
- High-compute agentic web search
- Availability
- Contact Exa for Deep Max access
- Self-serve deep modes
- deep-lite, deep and deep-reasoning
- Typical Deep Max latency
- Tens of seconds in Exa's launch tests
- Output
- Synthesized, web-grounded results
- Public Deep API price
- $12–$15 per 1,000 requests
Overview
What Deep Max is
Exa introduced Deep Max as its highest-quality search endpoint for research questions that need broad retrieval and synthesis. Its architecture fans out dozens of search calls, reads token-efficient excerpts and full pages, then combines the evidence into an answer.
Deep Max is still best understood as a high-end Exa capability, not a documented self-serve API type. Exa's current public Search API exposes deep-lite, deep and deep-reasoning; the Deep Max announcement and product page direct customers to sales for specific access.
Exa reports strong results on Deep Search QA, FRAMES and HLE-Search, but those are vendor-run benchmark results. Buyers should test the exact questions, source types, freshness requirements and output schema their application will use.
Use cases
Who Deep Max is best for
The strongest fit depends on the job you need the product to complete, not the size of its feature list.
Structured entity discovery
Find companies, people, papers or events and return fields grounded in web sources.
Quality-first agent workflows
Use a deeper search tier when coverage matters more than sub-second response time.
Capabilities
Core Deep Max features
Parallel search planning
Runs many Exa searches across different angles of a complex question.
Frontier-model synthesis
Uses a high-capability model to aggregate evidence and produce a unified result.
Token-efficient source reading
Exa Highlights focuses context on relevant passages while full page retrieval supports final grounding.
In-house web index
Parallel tool calls use Exa's own search and content stack instead of an external legacy search layer.
Structured output path
Current Exa deep search modes can return schema-matched JSON for downstream applications.
Multiple latency tiers
Public deep-lite, deep and deep-reasoning modes let developers choose less compute when Deep Max is unnecessary.
Process
How the Deep Max workflow works
Step 1
Benchmark the public deep modes
Start with deep or deep-reasoning and measure accuracy, latency and cost on representative tasks.
Step 2
Define the quality gap
Document which questions remain incomplete and what source or reasoning failures justify a higher tier.
Step 3
Discuss Deep Max access
Ask Exa about availability, pricing, limits, data controls and the exact integration surface.
Step 4
Validate every result
Inspect citations, test freshness, score required fields and retain a human review path for consequential research.
Cost
Deep Max pricing and free plan
Exa does not publish a standalone Deep Max rate and asks interested customers to contact sales. The current self-serve Search API charges $12 per 1,000 deep-lite or deep requests and $15 per 1,000 deep-reasoning requests for up to ten results.
Deep Max
Contact sales
Exa's highest-compute agentic search capability.
- No public standalone Deep Max rate
- Access and limits are sales-assisted
- Confirm the exact endpoint and service terms
Deep Lite
$12 per 1,000 requests
Lightweight synthesized search through the public Search API.
- $0.012 per request
- Up to 10 results in the base price
- Additional content processing may cost extra
Deep
$12 per 1,000 requests
Multi-step public search mode with reasoning and structured outputs.
- $0.012 per request
- Approximately 4–15 seconds
- Up to 10 results in the base price
Deep Reasoning
$15 per 1,000 requests
Public search mode with more reasoning for harder tasks.
- $0.015 per request
- Approximately 12–40 seconds
- Up to 10 results in the base price
Pricing checked . Check current pricing at the source ↗
Assessment
Deep Max strengths and limitations
Where it stands out
- Parallel retrieval can cover more angles than a single search request
- Exa's search, highlights and page retrieval operate within one stack
- Vendor benchmarks indicate strong quality and latency on difficult search tasks
- Lower-cost public deep modes provide a practical path before a sales-assisted tier
What to consider
- Deep Max is not listed as a public Search API type in current documentation
- Standalone pricing, limits and general availability are not publicly specified
- Vendor benchmark performance may not transfer to a buyer's domains or data contract
- Higher compute still cannot access private, blocked or absent web information
- Citations make review possible but do not prove that a claim is complete or correctly interpreted
Compare
Deep Max alternatives
The right alternative depends on the specific output, workflow, controls and budget your project requires.
Agents
Exa Agent
Choose Exa Agent for a documented asynchronous API with fixed effort tiers, citations and structured outputs.
Explore Exa Agent →Agents
Parallel Search
Choose Parallel Search for another web-search API designed for agent workflows.
Explore Parallel Search →Consumer
Gemini Deep Research Agent
Choose Gemini Deep Research Agent for Google's long-running research API and model ecosystem.
Explore Gemini Deep Research Agent →Questions
Deep Max FAQs
What is Exa Deep Max?
Deep Max is Exa's highest-compute agentic search system, using a frontier model and dozens of parallel Exa search calls to answer difficult web research questions.
Can developers call a deep-max API type?
Exa's current public Search API lists deep-lite, deep and deep-reasoning, not deep-max. Contact Exa to confirm Deep Max access and its exact integration surface.
How much does Deep Max cost?
Exa has not published a standalone Deep Max rate. Its public deep and deep-reasoning modes currently cost $12 and $15 per 1,000 requests respectively.
How fast is Deep Max?
Exa says typical launch queries completed in tens of seconds and reported benchmark medians between roughly 11 and 64 seconds depending on the test. Real latency depends on the task and service terms.
Is Deep Max the same as Exa Agent?
No. Deep Max is presented as Exa's highest-compute search capability. Exa Agent is a documented asynchronous research API with run lifecycle, effort controls, input data and structured outputs.
Bottom line
Our Deep Max verdict
Deep Max is an interesting quality-first search system, but most developers should benchmark Exa's documented deep and deep-reasoning modes first. Consider sales-assisted Deep Max only when measured research gaps justify its undisclosed access and pricing.
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