The use case: how OpenRouter deploys Exa
OpenRouter uses Exa as a search engine behind its server-side web search tool, giving models that lack built-in search access to live web results. The tool passes URLs, titles, snippets and citations back to the model, and works across supported tool-calling models.
More reported results
Figures published in Exa’s case study. They are not independently measured by usedby.
Last year, OpenRouter had powered 2.36M+ search queries with Exa.
In the customer’s words
OpenRouter has a laser focus on bringing a great developer experience to all language models, and Exa is the best way we've found for grounding AI in the real world in a model-agnostic way.Other AI tools used by OpenRouter
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Based on Exa’s published case study. We check the public evidence; the results are reported by the vendor.
exa.ai- Last checked
- Nov 12, 2026
Open source capture What the story claims, and what we checked
What we compared with the page.
- The figure: 73MChecked
Printed word for word on the page, near the name of OpenRouter.
- The passage quoted aboveChecked
Copied word for word from the page, near the name of OpenRouter.
- OpenRouter uses ExaChecked
Confirmed line.
- The result itselfNot checked
We quote it; we did not measure it.
OpenRouter turned web search from a model-specific add-on into shared infrastructure across its model marketplace. Developers can keep routing across hundreds of models while giving offline models the same path to fresh web context, citations, and server-side tool usage.