---
title: "The most accurate web search API in 2026: SimpleQA, FinanceBench and agent benchmarks"
category: "comparisons"
url: https://keirolabs.cloud/blog/most-accurate-web-search-api
---

## The 60-second version

**On the public benchmarks that test whether a search API finds the right answer, Keirolabs ranks first on three: the AIMultiple agentic search benchmark (15.2 of 20), SimpleQA with deep search (95.3%) and FinanceBench (78%).** Tavily, Exa, Parallel and you.com cluster within a few points of each other behind it. Perplexity leads a fourth board, the Artificial Analysis Search Index, which measures a different setup.

- **General factual questions (SimpleQA):** Keirolabs deep search 95.3%, Tavily 93.3%, you.com 92.1%, Exa 91.9%, Parallel 91.0%.
- **Agent tasks (AIMultiple, out of 20):** Keirolabs 15.2, Brave 14.89, Exa 14.39, Tavily 13.67, Perplexity 12.96.
- **Financial filings (FinanceBench):** Keirolabs 78%, Valyu 73%, Parallel 67%, Exa 63%, Google 55%.
- **Read the harness, not just the score:** the benchmarks use different answer models and scoring rules, and small gaps sit inside that noise.

Every score below links to its source. Where Keirolabs ran the benchmark itself, we say so.

## What "accurate" means for a search API

**A search API is accurate when the answer is in what it returns.** It does not answer questions itself. The calling model does, so every benchmark measures one of two things:

1. **Retrieval accuracy:** does the gold answer appear in the returned results or pages? This isolates the search API.
2. **End-to-end answer accuracy:** a fixed model answers from the returned results, and a grader scores the answer. This mixes the search API with the answering model.

Both are useful. Retrieval accuracy tells you whether the facts are there. End-to-end accuracy tells you whether a typical agent gets the answer right. Scores from the two kinds of test are not directly comparable, which is why the tables below show the harness next to each score.

## SimpleQA: short factual questions

**SimpleQA is OpenAI's set of short questions with one verifiable answer each, built to catch hallucination.** It is the most widely reported search-accuracy benchmark.

| Provider | SimpleQA | Harness |
|---|---|---|
| **Keirolabs deep search** | **95.3%** | Retrieval-only judged check, n=1,000 (own harness, script public) |
| Tavily | 93.3% | GPT-4.1 answers, official classifier, full set (self-published) |
| you.com | 92.1% | GPT-5.4 nano answers, GPT-5.4 mini judge (open harness) |
| Exa | 91.9% | GPT-5.4 agent, official grader (independent test) |
| Parallel | 91.0% | GPT-5.4 agent, official grader (independent test) |
| Claude web search | 90.5% | GPT-5.4 agent, native search tool (independent test) |
| Perplexity | 85.9% | GPT-4.1 answers, official classifier |
| Google (via Serper) | 82.2% | GPT-4.1 answers, official classifier |
| Brave | 76.1% | GPT-4.1 answers, official classifier |

The full leaderboard, with every source and the per-request price of each provider, is on our [deep search SimpleQA report](/Deep-search). Keirolabs' standard search (not deep) scored 84% on SimpleQA in our earlier run.

**What the table says:** the top five providers are within about four points, and their harnesses differ. Treat a one- or two-point gap as a tie. Treat the 10- to 20-point gaps to Google's SERP and Brave as real: a plain results page misses answers that content-returning APIs find.

## AIMultiple agentic search benchmark: agent tasks

**AIMultiple's 2026 benchmark scores providers on complete agentic tasks, out of 20, with one independent harness for everyone.**

| Provider | Score (/20) |
|---|---|
| **Keirolabs** | **15.2** |
| Brave | 14.89 |
| Exa | 14.39 |
| Tavily | 13.67 |
| Perplexity | 12.96 |

Source: [research.aimultiple.com/web-search-api](https://research.aimultiple.com/web-search-api/). Because it is third-party and runs every provider through the same tasks, this is the cleanest head-to-head of the four boards.

## FinanceBench: financial documents

**FinanceBench is Patronus AI's open-book benchmark: 150 expert questions over 361 SEC filings, where the answer is usually a number inside a table.** It is the hardest public test of retrieval precision.

| Provider | FinanceBench |
|---|---|
| **Keirolabs** | **78%** |
| Valyu | 73% |
| Parallel | 67% |
| Exa | 63% |
| Google | 55% |

For context, a standard GPT-4o plus vector-store RAG baseline lands around 19%. The run config and script are public on our [FinanceBench report](/financebench), and we go deeper in [the most accurate search API for financial data](/blog/most-accurate-search-api-financial-data).

## Artificial Analysis Search Index

**Artificial Analysis scores search APIs on its own index of tasks. In September 2026 Perplexity led at 80, Octen scored 77, and Parallel and Brave tied at 75, with no provider below 73** ([Artificial Analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/agents/search-api)). The spread is narrow: every listed provider is within seven points. It is a useful check that no single vendor dominates every test.

## Accuracy per dollar

**The most accurate API is only the right choice if you can afford to run it at your volume.** Price per 1,000 requests at list rates:

| Provider | Best public accuracy result | Price per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Keirolabs search | 15.2/20 AIMultiple | from $0.25 (`/search/lite`), $0.08 to $0.24 on plans |
| Keirolabs deep search | 95.3% SimpleQA | $4.44 |
| Parallel | 91.0% SimpleQA | $1.00 (Turbo) up to $5.00 |
| you.com | 92.1% SimpleQA | $5.00 |
| Brave | 14.89/20 AIMultiple | $5.00 |
| Exa | 91.9% SimpleQA | $7.00 (deep $12) |
| Tavily | 93.3% SimpleQA | $8.00 |
| Claude web search | 90.5% SimpleQA | $10.00 plus tokens |

**A practical setup uses two tiers:** a cheap, fast search for the many routine lookups, and a deep, content-returning search for the questions where a wrong answer is expensive. On Keirolabs both are on one key. More on cost in [search API cost per query vs latency](/blog/search-api-cost-per-query-latency).

## How to test accuracy on your own queries

**Public benchmarks pick the shortlist. Your own queries pick the winner.**

1. **Collect 100 real questions** from your logs, with answers you can verify.
2. **Run each candidate with the same answering model and prompt,** so only the search API changes.
3. **Score retrieval first:** is the answer in the returned text at all? Then score the final answer.
4. **Record cost and latency per question,** not per request. An API that needs three calls per answer costs three times its rate.

The Keirolabs free tier is 1,250 credits a month with no card, enough to run this test on a few hundred questions. For the complete buyer's comparison, see [the best AI search APIs](/blog/web-search-apis-for-agents-2026); for what each benchmark measures and where it breaks, see [search API benchmarks that matter](/blog/search-api-benchmarks-that-matter-2026-financebench-simpleqa).