18 August 2026

Artificial Analysis benchmarks search APIs for AI agent performance

• Artificial Analysis, a research firm, created the Search Index to measure how well seven search API providers work for AI agents. Testing includes Parallel, Exa, Firecrawl, You.com, Tavily, Keenable, and Brave.
• The benchmark tests three things equally: answering 900 research questions, finding 200 hard-to-find facts, and answering 600 questions across six knowledge domains. Each provider runs the same AI model in the same setup.
• Better search results reduce total costs by cutting token usage, the measure of how much text the model processes. Parallel's advanced version uses 40 percent fewer tokens than its basic version.
• Speed per individual search does not guarantee faster overall results. Parallel's fastest search option gave lower quality results, forcing the agent to search more times, making total time nearly identical to slower versions.
• Artificial Analysis says Parallel, Firecrawl, and Parallel's turbo option offer the best balance of cost and quality. The full testing methodology is public and other providers can request inclusion.

Reported by The Decoder