No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Azure AI Search vs Exa comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure AI Search
Ranking in Search as a Service
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Exa
Ranking in Search as a Service
15th
Average Rating
0.0
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Search as a Service category, the mindshare of Azure AI Search is 10.7%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Exa is 1.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Search as a Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure AI Search10.7%
Exa1.3%
Other88.0%
Search as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Prabakaran SP - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Architect at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
Automated indexing has streamlined document search workflows but semantic relevance and setup complexity still need improvement
We used the semantic search capabilities of Azure AI Search, but we haven't gotten good results in the semantic search. So we are exploring with ChromaDB, and Cosmos is having the capability of doing the semantic search as well. We are exploring that. A few queries we use analytics search, which works and is good. Analytics search is good. We are trying the ML capabilities of the product since we are using Databricks and other tools for building the models, MLflow, and related items. We are still working on proof of concepts, which could be better with ChromaDB or Cosmos or vector search or inbuilt Databricks vector stores. Language processing is not about user intention; it's about the context. If there is a document and you want to know the context of a particular section, then we would use vector search. Instead of traversing through the whole document, while chunking it into the vector, we'll categorize and chunk, and then we'll look only at those chunks to do a semantic search. When comparing Azure AI Search, I'm doing a proof of concept because with ChromaDB I can create instances using LangChain anywhere. For per session, I can create one ChromaDB and can remove it, which is really useful for proof of concepts. Instead of creating an Azure AI Search instance and doing that there, that is one advantage I'm seeing for the proof of concept alone, not for the entire product. I hope it should support all the embedding providers as well. Is there a viewer or tool similar to Storage Explorer? We are basically SQL-centric people, so we used to find Cosmos DB very quick for us when we search something and create indexes. I guess there is some limitation in Azure AI Search. I couldn't remember now, such as querying limitations. I'm not remembering that part.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Search as a Service solutions are best for your needs.
904,973 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure Search?
Azure AI Search could be improved regarding compatibility with Azure Blob Storage in order to keep the prompts and everything that I am using for building the tool safe. Regarding needed improvemen...
What is your primary use case for Azure Search?
My main use case for Azure AI Search is the index for the customization portal that they have. It combines data sources, indexers, and skill sets, making it a well-developed component. For example,...
What advice do you have for others considering Azure Search?
The advice I would give to others looking into using Azure AI Search is to first watch the tutorials and seek information on the website, as it is very reliable. Overall, Azure AI Search is a great...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

XOMNI, Real Madrid C.F., Weichert Realtors, JLL, NAV CANADA, Medihoo, autoTrader Corporation, Gjirafa
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic, Algolia, Glean and others in Search as a Service. Updated: July 2026.
904,973 professionals have used our research since 2012.