In this paper, we introduce two classes of exponential-type means \(\Phi _{p}(a,b;\omega )\) and \(\Psi _{p}(a,b;\omega )\) for distinct positive real numbers a, b with real parameter p and weight \(\omega \in (0,1)\) . By virtue of these exponential-type means, we establish sharp bounds for the Toader mean \(T(a,b)=\frac{2}{\pi }\int _{0}^{{\pi }/{2}}\sqrt{a^2{\cos ^2{t}}+b^2{\sin ^2{t}}}dt\) , precisely, for any real number p, we determine the best possible constants \(\omega _i=\omega _i(p)\in (0,1)\) ( \(i=1,2,3,4\) ) such that the double inequalities \(\begin{aligned} \Phi _p\left( a,b;\omega _1\right)<T(a,b)<\Phi _p\left( a,b;\omega _2\right) ,\quad \Psi _p\left( a,b;\omega _3\right)<T(a,b)<\Psi _p\left( a,b;\omega _4\right) \end{aligned}\) hold for all positive \(a\ne b\) . The sharp bounds obtained for the Toader mean generalize several recently established results. As direct applications, we derive several new asymptotic inequalities for the Legendre’s complete elliptic integral of the second kind, which compare favorably to some previous results.