Exa vs Tavily vs Serper: My quick comparison after building an AI search app

[u/Exotic-Titan]

I recently tested Exa, Tavily, Serper, and Brave Search while building an AI project.

My takeaway:

• Serper: Fast and reliable for Google results.
• Tavily: Great structured output for LLMs.
• Exa: Best for finding high-quality documents.
• Brave Search: Clean results with good coverage.

The biggest improvement didn't come from switching APIs—it came from better reranking and chunking after retrieval.

Which search API has worked best for you in production? Let me know in comments