exa-contents

name	exa-contents
description	Call Exa Contents directly with cURL or raw HTTP. Use when an agent already has URLs and needs POST /contents without an SDK for extracted text, highlights, summaries, links, image links, subpages, freshness-controlled crawling, or per-URL status handling.

Exa Contents

Requires API key: Get one at https://dashboard.exa.ai/api-keys

Header: x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY

Use POST https://api.exa.ai/contents when the agent already knows the URLs and needs clean, LLM-ready extraction without running a new search. Start with one content mode: highlights for compact agent context, text for broad page context, or summary for Exa-side compression.

Quick Start (cURL)

Basic text extraction

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/contents" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "urls": ["https://example.com"],
    "text": true
  }'

Highlights with freshness control

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/contents" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "urls": ["https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.06435"],
    "highlights": {
      "query": "methodology and results"
    },
    "maxAgeHours": 24,
    "livecrawlTimeout": 12000
  }'

Endpoint

POST https://api.exa.ai/contents

Authentication: x-api-key: <API_KEY> header. Exa also accepts Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>, but prefer x-api-key in cURL examples for consistency.

Use this endpoint for known-URL extraction. If the agent needs discovery or ranking first, use POST /search.

Parameters

Core request parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	string[]	Yes	-	URLs to extract content from. Use this for known URLs.
text	boolean or object	No	-	Return full page text as markdown. Object form supports maxCharacters, includeHtmlTags, verbosity, includeSections, and excludeSections.
highlights	boolean or object	No	-	Return key excerpts. Prefer true for agent workflows unless a custom focus is needed.
summary	boolean or object	No	-	Return per-page LLM summaries. Use when the caller wants Exa-side compression or structured extraction.
maxAgeHours	integer	No	-	Freshness control. 0 always live crawls; -1 uses cache only; omit for default cache-first behavior with crawl fallback.
livecrawlTimeout	integer	No	10000	Timeout for live crawling in milliseconds. Use 10000 to 15000 for most freshness-sensitive calls.
subpages	integer	No	0	Number of linked subpages to crawl from each URL.
subpageTarget	string or string[]	No	-	Terms used to prioritize which subpages matter, such as ["api", "reference", "pricing"].
extras.links	integer	No	0	Number of links to extract from each page.
extras.imageLinks	integer	No	0	Number of image URLs to extract from each page.
compliance	string	No	-	Enterprise-only compliance mode, such as hipaa, when enabled for the account.

Text object options

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
maxCharacters	integer	-	Character limit for returned text. Use this instead of tokensNum.
includeHtmlTags	boolean	false	Preserve HTML tags in output.
verbosity	string	compact	compact, standard, or full. Pair fresh section-aware extraction with maxAgeHours: 0.
includeSections	string[]	-	Only include selected sections: header, navigation, banner, body, sidebar, footer, metadata.
excludeSections	string[]	-	Exclude selected sections from the same section list.

Highlights object options

Prefer highlights: true for the highest-quality default. Only use object form when the agent needs a custom focus or budget.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
query	string	-	Custom query guiding which excerpts are returned.
maxCharacters	integer	-	Cap highlight characters per URL. Omit unless the caller has a strict budget.

Summary object options

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
query	string	-	Custom query for the summary.
schema	object	-	JSON Schema for structured per-page summaries.

Content Modes

On /contents, text, highlights, and summary are top-level request fields.

Mode	Best for	Notes
text	Deep analysis and broad page context	Use maxCharacters to keep payloads bounded.
highlights	Agent workflows and factual lookups	Most token-efficient default. Excerpts are grounded in the source page.
summary	Compression or structured per-page extraction	Adds Exa-side synthesis per page.

Avoid requesting multiple modes unless the caller truly needs multiple views of the same page.

Freshness and Crawling

Use maxAgeHours as the normative freshness control.

Value	Behavior
omitted	Use default cache-first behavior with crawl fallback when needed.
positive integer	Use cache if it is less than N hours old, otherwise live crawl.
0	Always live crawl. Highest freshness, higher latency.
-1	Cache only. Fastest, but fails if no cached content exists.

Set livecrawlTimeout when live crawling should not block past a fixed budget.

Subpages and extras

Use subpages and subpageTarget when linked pages matter.

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/contents" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "urls": ["https://docs.example.com"],
    "text": {
      "maxCharacters": 5000
    },
    "subpages": 10,
    "subpageTarget": ["api", "reference", "guide"],
    "extras": {
      "links": 10,
      "imageLinks": 5
    }
  }'

Start with subpages around 5 to 10, then increase only when the caller needs broader site coverage.

Response Fields and Statuses

Inspect statuses even when the HTTP status is 200. The endpoint can succeed for one URL and fail for another in the same request.

curl -sS -X POST "https://api.exa.ai/contents" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $EXA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "urls": ["https://example.com", "https://failed-url.example.com"],
    "highlights": true
  }' | jq '{results, statuses}'

Field	Type	Description
requestId	string	Unique request identifier.
results	array	Extracted content result objects.
results[].title	string	Page title.
results[].url	string	Page URL.
results[].publishedDate	string or null	Estimated publication date when available.
results[].author	string or null	Author when available.
results[].text	string	Returned when text is requested.
results[].highlights	string[]	Returned when highlights is requested.
results[].highlightScores	number[]	Similarity scores for highlights.
results[].summary	string	Returned when summary is requested.
results[].subpages	array	Nested result objects from subpage crawling.
results[].extras.links	string[]	Extracted links when requested.
statuses	array	Per-URL success or error states. Always inspect this field.
statuses[].id	string	Requested URL.
statuses[].status	string	success or error.
statuses[].error.tag	string	Error type for failed URLs.
statuses[].error.httpStatusCode	integer or null	HTTP code associated with a per-URL failure.
costDollars.total	number	Total request cost when returned.

Common per-URL error tags include CRAWL_NOT_FOUND, CRAWL_TIMEOUT, CRAWL_LIVECRAWL_TIMEOUT, SOURCE_NOT_AVAILABLE, UNSUPPORTED_URL, and CRAWL_UNKNOWN_ERROR.

Critical Pitfalls

• Keep text, highlights, and summary at the top level on /contents.
• Do not wrap extraction options in a contents object; that nesting belongs to /search.
• Do not assume HTTP 200 means every URL succeeded; inspect statuses.
• Do not send stream: true; /contents is not a streaming endpoint.
• Do not send tokensNum; use text.maxCharacters to cap extracted text.
• Do not use useAutoprompt, numSentences, highlightsPerUrl, or older livecrawl string values in new requests.
• Prefer maxAgeHours for freshness and pair it with livecrawlTimeout when crawl latency matters.
• Use subpageTarget with subpages; otherwise subpage selection is best effort.
• Pick one of highlights, text, or summary by default. Stack modes only when the caller truly needs multiple views of each page.