Exa People Search - Apify Actor

An open-source Apify Actor wrapper for Exa.ai's powerful people search API. Find professionals on LinkedIn and other platforms using natural language queries powered by AI.

🎯 What is This?

This Actor integrates Exa.ai's people search with Apify's workflow automation platform. Exa uses hybrid retrieval combining fine-tuned embeddings with neural search, trained on 1B+ people profiles.

You bring your own Exa API key - this Actor just handles the integration with Apify's platform.

✨ Key Features

• 🤖 AI-Powered Search - Natural language queries using Exa's neural search
• 🎯 Role-Based Discovery - Find professionals by job function, seniority, location
• 🌍 Global Coverage - Search across 195+ countries
• 📊 Rich Profile Data - LinkedIn URLs, titles, images, and optional full text
• ⚡ Fast & Accurate - State-of-the-art people search benchmarks
• 💰 Transparent Costs - Pay only for Exa API usage + Apify compute

🚀 Getting Started

1. Get an Exa API Key

1. Sign up at exa.ai
2. Get your API key from the dashboard
3. $10 in free credits to start (as of December 2025)

2. Run the Actor

Add your Exa API key in the Actor input form. The key is marked as secret and encrypted - it will never be exposed in logs or to the Actor creator.

📝 Input

Required Fields

Exa API Key (exaApiKey)

• Your Exa.ai API key
• Get one at https://exa.ai
• Secure: Encrypted and never exposed in logs or to the Actor creator

Search Query (query)

• Natural language description of who you're looking for
• Examples:
  • "VP of Engineering at fintech startups in London"
  • "Senior ML engineers with NLP experience in Berlin"
  • "Founders of sustainable fashion brands in Europe"

Optional Fields

User Location (userLocation)

• ISO 2 country code to bias results
• Default: US
• Choose from 195+ countries

Number of Results (numResults)

• How many people to return (1-100)
• Default: 10

Include Text Content (includeText)

• Enable to get full profile text
• Default: false
• Adds $1 per 1,000 results (as of Dec 2025)

Max Characters (maxCharacters)

• Maximum characters to retrieve per profile when text is enabled
• Range: 100-10,000
• Default: 2000

Highlights Query (highlightsQuery)

• Optional query to extract relevant highlights/snippets from profiles
• Returns AI-selected excerpts matching your query
• Example: "machine learning", "B2B sales experience"
• Adds $1 per 1,000 results (as of Dec 2025)

Sentences per Highlight (numSentences)

• Number of sentences to return per highlight
• Range: 1-10, Default: 3
• Only applies when Highlights Query is set

Highlights per Result (highlightsPerUrl)

• Maximum number of highlights per person
• Range: 1-10, Default: 3
• Only applies when Highlights Query is set
• Note: Increases Exa API costs

📤 Output

Results are stored in the Apify dataset. Each result includes:

{
  "id": "https://exa.ai/library/person/...",
  "title": "Jane Smith | VP of Engineering at Acme Corp",
  "url": "https://linkedin.com/in/janesmith",
  "author": "Jane Smith",
  "publishedDate": "2025-11-18T17:29:45.000Z",
  "image": "https://media.licdn.com/.../profile-photo.jpg",
  "text": "Full profile content (if includeText enabled)...",
  "highlights": [
    "Led machine learning team of 15 engineers...",
    "Specialized in deep learning architectures..."
  ],
  "highlightScores": [0.89, 0.76]
}

Field Descriptions

• id - Unique Exa identifier for the person
• title - Full title including name and current position
• url - Direct link to their professional profile (usually LinkedIn)
• author - Person's name
• publishedDate - When the profile was last updated (if available)
• image - Profile photo URL
• text - Full profile content (only if includeText is enabled)
• highlights - AI-selected relevant excerpts (only if highlightsQuery is provided)
• highlightScores - Relevance scores for each highlight (0-1 scale)

Search Metadata

Metadata is stored in the key-value store under search-metadata:

{
  "requestId": "abc123...",
  "resolvedSearchType": "neural",
  "searchTime": 947.5,
  "costDollars": {
    "total": 0.053,
    "search": { "neural": 0.025 },
    "contents": { "text": 0.028 }
  },
  "query": "your search query",
  "userLocation": "US",
  "numResults": 10,
  "includeText": false,
  "resultCount": 10,
  "executedAt": "2025-12-18T10:30:00.000Z"
}

💰 Pricing

Exa API Costs

This Actor uses your Exa API credits. From Exa's pricing (as of December 2025):

Search:

• 1-25 results: $5 per 1,000 requests ($0.005 per search)
• 26-100 results: $25 per 1,000 requests ($0.025 per search)

Text Content:

• $1 per 1,000 pages ($0.001 per result)

Highlights:

• $1 per 1,000 pages ($0.001 per result)

Examples:

• 10 results (no text): $0.005
• 50 results (no text): $0.025
• 50 results (with text): $0.025 + $0.05 = $0.075
• 100 results (with text): $0.025 + $0.10 = $0.125

Apify Platform Costs

Standard Apify compute costs apply based on:

• Memory usage
• Runtime duration
• Platform plan

See Apify pricing for details.

🎨 Use Cases

Sales & Business Development

{
  "query": "VP of Sales at SaaS companies in New York",
  "userLocation": "US",
  "numResults": 50
}

Recruiting & Talent Acquisition

{
  "query": "Senior DevOps engineers with Kubernetes in Singapore",
  "userLocation": "SG",
  "numResults": 100,
  "includeText": true,
  "highlightsQuery": "kubernetes docker terraform experience"
}

Market Research

{
  "query": "CTOs at Series A healthcare startups",
  "userLocation": "US",
  "numResults": 50,
  "includeText": true
}

Investor Relations

{
  "query": "Managing partners at VC firms in San Francisco",
  "userLocation": "US",
  "numResults": 25
}

💡 Best Practices

Writing Effective Queries

✅ Be Specific

• Good: "Head of Design at fintech companies in Toronto"
• Bad: "designer"

✅ Use Natural Language

• "VP of Product with SaaS experience in Seattle"
• "Senior data scientists working on computer vision"

✅ Combine Multiple Criteria

• "Senior software engineers with React at scale-ups in Amsterdam"

✅ Experiment with Variations

• Try: "Founders of ecommerce startups" vs "CEOs at DTC brands"

Optimizing Costs

• Start with small searches (10-25 results) to test queries
• Only enable includeText when you need full profiles
• Use specific queries to get better results with fewer searches
• Monitor costs in the metadata output

Location Targeting

• Use userLocation to bias toward a country
• Include city names in your query for local results
• Combine both: userLocation: "DE" + query with "Berlin"

🔗 Integration Examples

CRM Export

Chain with Apify integrations to export to:

• HubSpot
• Salesforce
• Google Sheets
• Airtable

Scheduled Searches

Set up recurring searches to:

• Monitor competitor hiring
• Track industry trends
• Build evergreen lead lists

Enrichment Workflows

1. Search for target profiles (this Actor)
2. Enrich with company data
3. Score and qualify leads
4. Export to your CRM

⚙️ Local Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Strijdhagen/apify-exa-people-search.git
cd apify-deep-people-search

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Set your Exa API key in .env
echo "EXA_API_KEY=your_key_here" > .env

# Create test input
cat > storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json << EOF
{
  "exaApiKey": "your_key_here",
  "query": "Senior software engineer in Amsterdam",
  "userLocation": "NL",
  "numResults": 10,
  "includeText": false
}
EOF

# Run locally
npm start

📚 Resources

• Exa.ai Documentation
• Exa People Search Benchmark
• Exa Pricing
• Apify Documentation
• Apify SDK

🤝 Contributing

This is an open-source project. Contributions are welcome!

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Make your changes
4. Submit a pull request

📄 License

MIT - see LICENSE file for details

⚠️ Limitations

• Maximum 100 results per search (standard API limit, 1,000 for Custom plans)
• Text content configurable from 100 to 10,000 characters per result
• Results depend on publicly available profile information
• Rate limits apply based on your Exa subscription tier

🆘 Support

• Exa API Issues: Contact Exa support
• Actor Issues: Open an issue on GitHub
• Apify Platform: Check Apify docs

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