Best search API to find companies backed by a specific investor
What the benchmark found. Parallel basic (parallel-basic) leads F1 at 46.5% on 45 multi-constraint questions; 16 configurations are ranked. Questions combine investor backing with one or two further constraints, and the agent is held constant.
What this page compares. Many of the 45 questions define a company set by its investor plus one or two more constraints: a fund's portfolio companies in a given region or stage. This is the search-API ranking for that job.
How to read it. The ranking is the overall multi-turn company search board, not a slice: the benchmark does not publish per-constraint scores, so no provider is claimed to be better at investor backing specifically. F1 rewards the API that lets the agent recover the complete set without padding.
Method in one paragraph. The same agent, prompt, turn budget and tool schema run against every web search API on 45 questions that each define a company set by three or four constraints. Every returned company is resolved to a canonical identity and compared with a human-reviewed gold set; precision, recall, F1 and exact-set are averaged over three runs per question. The model-only baseline is 0.
Most accurate · Fastest · Cheapest · Find companies by criteria · Search + fetch · Full benchmark
Ranked by F1, search-only
| Provider | Endpoint & configuration | F1 | Precision | Recall | Exact set | Median time | Mean turns | Median task cost | API list price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parallel | POST /v1/search mode=basicparallel-basic | 46.5 ± 1.9 | 88.7 ± 0.9 | 34.4 ± 2.0 | 3.7 ± 2.6 | 67.6 s | 7.4 | $1.120$0.070 search$1.050 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Exa | POST /search type=deepexa-deep | 45.4 ± 2.0 | 83.2 ± 3.0 | 33.7 ± 1.4 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 89.5 s | 7.4 | $0.717$0.156 search$0.556 token cost | $0.012 / search |
| Parallel | POST /v1/search mode=advancedparallel-advanced | 44.2 ± 1.4 | 87.6 ± 3.4 | 32.0 ± 1.6 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 83.4 s | 7.3 | $0.625$0.070 search$0.565 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Exa | POST /search type=instantexa-instant | 43.3 ± 1.0 | 82.6 ± 3.8 | 32.2 ± 0.5 | 3.0 ± 1.3 | 49.8 s | 7.3 | $0.652$0.091 search$0.559 token cost | $0.007 / search |
| Linkup | POST /v1/search depth=fastlinkup-fast | 41.1 ± 1.7 | 82.8 ± 1.0 | 30.3 ± 1.5 | 0.7 ± 1.3 | 64.2 s | 7.4 | $0.923$0.070 search$0.853 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Tavily | POST /search search_depth=advancedtavily-advanced | 41.1 ± 2.3 | 83.7 ± 4.2 | 29.8 ± 1.7 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 92.2 s | 7.4 | $1.029$0.224 search$0.808 token cost | $0.016 / search |
| Linkup | POST /v1/search depth=standardlinkup-standard | 40.6 ± 0.9 | 84.0 ± 7.9 | 29.7 ± 1.4 | 1.5 ± 2.6 | 72.3 s | 7.3 | $0.937$0.070 search$0.867 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Parallel | POST /v1/search mode=fastparallel-fast | 38.0 ± 2.0 | 79.9 ± 4.6 | 27.5 ± 1.4 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 53.9 s | 7.6 | $0.460$0.014 search$0.447 token cost | $0.001 / search |
| Perplexity | POST /searchsearch_context_size=low | 37.8 ± 2.1 | 79.3 ± 5.7 | 26.8 ± 1.4 | 2.2 ± 2.2 | 48.9 s | 7.7 | $0.334$0.070 search$0.264 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Parallel | POST /v1/search mode=turboparallel-turbo | 34.7 ± 2.4 | 80.0 ± 5.2 | 24.8 ± 2.4 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 46.4 s | 7.6 | $0.419$0.014 search$0.405 token cost | $0.001 / search |
| You | POST /v1/searchyou | 33.1 ± 2.4 | 75.7 ± 3.1 | 23.1 ± 1.9 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 46.2 s | 7.7 | $0.477$0.070 search$0.408 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Firecrawl | POST /v2/searchfirecrawl | 30.4 ± 1.1 | 77.3 ± 4.4 | 20.7 ± 0.7 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 75.0 s | 7.9 | $0.282$0.070 search$0.212 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Brave Search | GET /res/v1/web/searchbrave | 28.0 ± 1.7 | 66.9 ± 8.5 | 19.3 ± 0.5 | 0.7 ± 1.3 | 43.5 s | 8.0 | $0.268$0.070 search$0.200 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| TinyFish | GET api.search.tinyfish.aitinyfish | 26.6 ± 1.3 | 64.7 ± 1.5 | 17.9 ± 0.8 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 64.2 s | 7.9 | $0.212$0.000 search$0.212 token cost | $0 / search |
| Seltz | POST /v1/search scope=companiesseltz-companies | 14.5 ± 0.9 | 40.0 ± 3.1 | 9.4 ± 0.7 | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 55.2 s | 7.3 | $1.751$0.070 search$1.681 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| SERP (RapidAPI) | GET google-search74.p.rapidapi.comserp | 0.4 ± 0.6 | 0.7 ± 1.3 | 0.3 ± 0.4 | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 31.4 s | 7.8 | $0.103$0.036 search$0.065 token cost | $0.003 / search |
F1, precision, recall, and exact-set accuracy are percentages reported as mean ± sample SD across three independent runs; each run aggregates all 45 questions. SD is measured in percentage points. Median time is the median end-to-end time across all runs for each vendor. Median task cost is the median of LLM $ plus search/fetch API $ per agent run. API list price is the PAYG unit rate of the search (and fetch) endpoint the harness calls.
Same sort, with a page-reading tool enabled
| Provider | Endpoint & configuration | F1 | Precision | Recall | Exact set | Median time | Mean turns | Median task cost | API list price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exa | POST /search type=deepexa-deep | 48.2 ± 2.1 | 89.4 ± 1.2 | 36.0 ± 2.2 | 2.2 ± 2.2 | 95.8 s | 7.5 | $0.683$0.156 search+fetch$0.526 token cost | $0.012 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| Perplexity | POST /searchsearch_context_size=high | 46.6 ± 2.0 | 87.7 ± 5.9 | 34.7 ± 1.1 | 2.2 ± 2.2 | 53.9 s | 7.5 | $0.504$0.070 search+fetch$0.441 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Exa | POST /search type=instantexa-instant | 44.9 ± 0.9 | 85.9 ± 2.5 | 33.5 ± 0.9 | 5.2 ± 1.3 | 52.5 s | 7.5 | $0.653$0.091 search+fetch$0.557 token cost | $0.007 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| Parallel | POST /v1/search mode=basicparallel-basic | 42.3 ± 1.1 | 81.3 ± 2.8 | 31.3 ± 1.1 | 3.0 ± 1.3 | 68.6 s | 7.5 | $1.089$0.061 search+fetch$1.033 token cost | $0.005 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| Parallel | POST /v1/search mode=advancedparallel-advanced | 42.2 ± 1.1 | 87.6 ± 0.3 | 30.1 ± 1.1 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 80.9 s | 7.4 | $0.599$0.061 search+fetch$0.538 token cost | $0.005 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| Linkup | POST /v1/search depth=standardlinkup-standard | 42.0 ± 1.8 | 90.7 ± 2.0 | 30.5 ± 2.0 | 3.0 ± 3.4 | 81.0 s | 7.5 | $0.911$0.070 search+fetch$0.848 token cost | $0.005 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| Tavily | POST /search search_depth=advancedtavily-advanced | 41.0 ± 1.3 | 89.4 ± 6.0 | 29.1 ± 0.7 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 92.6 s | 7.3 | $0.898$0.195 search+fetch$0.685 token cost | $0.016 / search$0.0032 / fetch |
| Linkup | POST /v1/search depth=fastlinkup-fast | 39.9 ± 1.3 | 85.3 ± 3.6 | 28.6 ± 1.3 | 0.7 ± 1.3 | 68.0 s | 7.3 | $0.903$0.061 search+fetch$0.837 token cost | $0.005 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| Parallel | POST /v1/search mode=fastparallel-fast | 39.3 ± 3.3 | 82.3 ± 6.6 | 28.2 ± 2.0 | 2.2 ± 0.0 | 55.1 s | 7.6 | $0.441$0.014 search+fetch$0.427 token cost | $0.001 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| Parallel | POST /v1/search mode=turboparallel-turbo | 36.0 ± 3.5 | 83.6 ± 4.0 | 25.0 ± 2.6 | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 48.1 s | 7.7 | $0.414$0.013 search+fetch$0.400 token cost | $0.001 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| You | POST /v1/searchyou | 34.0 ± 0.9 | 78.8 ± 0.6 | 23.8 ± 1.2 | 3.0 ± 1.3 | 47.4 s | 7.8 | $0.489$0.065 search+fetch$0.427 token cost | $0.005 / search$0.001 / fetch |
| Firecrawl | POST /v2/searchfirecrawl | 33.2 ± 2.1 | 83.3 ± 0.8 | 22.7 ± 1.8 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 82.1 s | 7.9 | $0.295$0.063 search+fetch$0.230 token cost | $0.005 / search$0.0025 / fetch |
| TinyFish | GET api.search.tinyfish.aitinyfish | 30.2 ± 3.5 | 70.9 ± 11.3 | 20.9 ± 2.5 | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 63.4 s | 7.9 | $0.219$0.000 search+fetch$0.219 token cost | $0 / search$0 / fetch |
| Brave Search | GET /res/v1/web/searchbrave | 29.4 ± 1.6 | 73.5 ± 5.8 | 20.4 ± 0.9 | 1.5 ± 1.3 | 45.1 s | 8.0 | $0.285$0.060 search+fetch$0.222 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| Seltz | POST /v1/search scope=companiesseltz-companies | 16.3 ± 1.5 | 49.5 ± 2.4 | 10.2 ± 1.2 | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 60.1 s | 7.5 | $1.741$0.070 search+fetch$1.671 token cost | $0.005 / search |
| SERP (RapidAPI) | GET google-search74.p.rapidapi.comserp | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 0.0 ± 0.0 | 33.4 s | 7.8 | $0.102$0.039 search+fetch$0.066 token cost | $0.003 / search |
F1, precision, recall, and exact-set accuracy are percentages reported as mean ± sample SD across three independent runs; each run aggregates all 45 questions. SD is measured in percentage points. Median time is the median end-to-end time across all runs for each vendor. Median task cost is the median of LLM $ plus search/fetch API $ per agent run. API list price is the PAYG unit rate of the search (and fetch) endpoint the harness calls.
Common questions
Which search API is best for finding companies by investor backing?
Parallel basic (parallel-basic) leads F1 at 46.5% on 45 multi-constraint questions; 16 configurations are ranked. Questions combine investor backing with one or two further constraints, and the agent is held constant.
Is this a company database or a web search API?
Web search. A company database answers from a stored record and cannot assemble a set defined by criteria it does not index. This benchmark measures whether a research agent can build that set from live search results. The model-only baseline is 0.
Is there a per-investor backing score?
No. The benchmark publishes overall precision, recall, F1 and exact-set per configuration, and the 45 questions mix constraint types. This page frames the job; it does not claim a slice the data does not hold.