| --- |
| license: mit |
| pretty_name: Web Search API Eval |
| language: |
| - en |
| size_categories: |
| - n<1K |
| task_categories: |
| - question-answering |
| - text-retrieval |
| tags: |
| - web-search |
| - search-api |
| - benchmark |
| - evaluation |
| - rag |
| - ai-agents |
| - freshness |
| - you.com |
| - tavily |
| - exa |
| - parallel |
| configs: |
| - config_name: questions |
| data_files: questions.jsonl |
| default: true |
| - config_name: results |
| data_files: results.jsonl |
| - config_name: scorecards |
| data_files: scorecards.jsonl |
| --- |
| |
| # Web Search API Eval |
|
|
| A live, side-by-side benchmark of four web search APIs for AI agents: **You.com, Tavily, Exa and Parallel**. It covers 30 agent-style queries across three use cases (GTM, insurance, finance), with 3 runs per query (90 calls per API), run on **October 8, 2026**. |
|
|
| - **Full results and charts:** https://psinglap.github.io/websearch-api-eval/ |
| - **Code, harness and methodology:** https://github.com/psinglap/websearch-api-eval |
| - **Use it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor (MCP):** `https://websearch-api-eval.psberkeleymba.workers.dev/mcp` or `npx -y websearch-api-eval-mcp` |
|
|
| ## Subsets |
|
|
| | Config | Rows | What each row is | |
| |---|---|---| |
| | `questions` (default) | 30 | One agent query: the upstream task, the exact search call sent to every API, its parameters (freshness window, domain filters), what the agent needs back, the answer key captured live, and source URLs | |
| | `results` | 120 | One query × provider: a short summary of what the API returned and its accuracy score (0–2, mean of 3 runs, SimpleQA rubric) | |
| | `scorecards` | 136 | One metric × provider × scope (`overall`, `gtm`, `insurance`, `finance`): latency, accuracy, freshness, empty responses, content, tokens and cost, as published | |
|
|
| ```python |
| from datasets import load_dataset |
| |
| questions = load_dataset("psinglap/websearch-api-eval", "questions", split="train") |
| results = load_dataset("psinglap/websearch-api-eval", "results", split="train") |
| ``` |
|
|
| ## Headline results (overall, 90 calls per API) |
|
|
| | Metric | You.com | Tavily | Exa | Parallel | |
| |---|---|---|---|---| |
| | Accuracy score (% of max) | 63% | 51% | 53% | **67%** | |
| | Queries fully correct in all 3 repeats | **57%** | 37% | 50% | **57%** | |
| | Results dated inside the query's window | **59%** | 37% | 44% | 29% | |
| | Empty responses (of 90) | **0** | 27 | 12 | 3 | |
| | Latency p50 / p95, client (ms) | **593 / 804** | 1,864 / 3,305 | 1,106 / 3,997 | 2,038 / 4,117 | |
| | Search cost per correct answer | $0.026 | $0.016 | $0.012 | **$0.008** | |
|
|
| ## Methodology |
|
|
| - **Queries.** Each query is written the way an agent calls web search: an upstream task, the search call, its parameters and what the agent needs back. Every use case has at least 4 real-time queries; the rest use 24-hour, 48-hour, 7-day or 1-year windows. Some queries expect "none" as the correct answer. |
| - **Same request for every API.** 10 results, full content where supported, the freshness window, and domain filters where supported. |
| - **Runs.** promptfoo, 3 runs per query. Latency is client wall-clock around the HTTP request after a discarded warm-up call; server-reported latency is kept alongside. |
| - **Grading.** Answers were graded from each provider's saved top-5 results with the published [SimpleQA](https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.04368) grader rubric (correct = 2, partial list = 1, incorrect or not attempted = 0). "None" answers and stale results follow [FreshQA](https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03214) strict rules. Answer keys were captured at run time and archived to the Wayback Machine. |
| - **Full metric definitions:** [eval/METRICS.md](https://github.com/psinglap/websearch-api-eval/blob/main/eval/METRICS.md). |
|
|
| ## Limits |
|
|
| - 10 queries per use case is a focused test, not a leaderboard; differences of a query or two are within noise. |
| - Results reflect one run day (Oct 8, 2026). Freshness and accuracy depend on what was published that day, so answer keys for real-time queries are only valid for that date. |
| - Costs are vendor list prices on the run date and cover search only. |
| - `returned` is a short human-written summary, not the raw API response. |
|
|
| ## Citation |
|
|
| ```bibtex |
| @misc{singla2026websearchapieval, |
| title = {Web Search API Eval: You.com, Tavily, Exa and Parallel on 30 agent queries}, |
| author = {Singla, Pallavi}, |
| year = {2026}, |
| url = {https://github.com/psinglap/websearch-api-eval} |
| } |
| ``` |
|
|
| ## License |
|
|
| MIT. Product names and trademarks belong to their owners. This benchmark is independent and was not sponsored by any provider. |
|
|
