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: json { "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: json { "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 json { "query": "VP of Sales at SaaS companies in New York", "userLocation": "US", "numResults": 50 } ### Recruiting & Talent Acquisition json { "query": "Senior DevOps engineers with Kubernetes in Singapore", "userLocation": "SG", "numResults": 100, "includeText": true, "highlightsQuery": "kubernetes docker terraform experience" } ### Market Research json { "query": "CTOs at Series A healthcare startups", "userLocation": "US", "numResults": 50, "includeText": true } ### Investor Relations json { "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 bash # 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 --- Powered by Exa.ai | Built for Apify