Octen Search Ranks Third on Artificial Analysis's Search Agent Index
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Octen Search debuts third on the Artificial Analysis Search Index with a score of 77, achieving the fastest Time per Task at 16.9 seconds and one of the lowest Costs per Task We benchmarked Octen Search from @OctenAI using our search agent methodology: a fixed base model running inside our open-source agent harness, Stirrup, with tools for searching and fetching pages from the web. Only the provider behind the search tool changes. Key results of Octen Search with highlights enabled: ➤ Strong Search Index performance, led by BrowseComp: Octen Search scores 77 on the Artificial Analysis Search Index, placing third behind Perplexity Search (medium, 80) and Perplexity Search (high, 79), and level with Perplexity Search (low, 77). Octen performs particularly well on BrowseComp, scoring 86, just one point behind the leader. It also scores within one point of the leaders on DeepSearchQA at 80, while its AA-Omniscience score of 66 trails Firecrawl Search (73) and Perplexity Search (medium, 72) ➤ Fastest search across providers: Octen Search averages 0.2 seconds per query, 5x faster than the Perplexity Search variants at 1.0 to 1.2 seconds. Its Time per Task is 16.9 seconds, the lowest…
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Artificial Analysis tests search backends for AI agents by holding everything else fixed: the same base model, the same open-source (Stirrup), and the same tasks, changing only which company's search and page-fetching tool the calls. On that test, Octen Search from Octen AI placed third with a score of 77 on the Search Agent Index, just behind Perplexity Search running at medium settings (80) and high settings (79), and tied with Perplexity's low setting (77). It scored particularly well on BrowseComp, a of hard-to-find web facts, reaching 86, one point off the leader.
What sets Octen apart isn't accuracy but speed and price. Artificial Analysis measured its Time per Task at 16.9 seconds, the fastest of any provider in the comparison, against a board that ranges up to 62.9 seconds, and its per-query response averaged 0.2 seconds, about five times quicker than the Perplexity Search variants. At $0.058 per Search Index task, it's also cheaper than every paid competitor Artificial Analysis tested, undercut only by TinyFish Search's free offering. For teams building agent pipelines, that's a real tradeoff: near-top accuracy at meaningfully lower latency and cost, rather than the single best score.
- agent harness — The scaffolding around a model that turns it into a working agent — the loop, the tools it can call, and the rules for when to stop.
- AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
- benchmark — A standard public test set for comparing AI models — the shared scoreboards behind every "model X beats model Y" claim.
“Octen Search scores 77 on the Artificial Analysis Search Index, placing third behind Perplexity Search (medium, 80) and Perplexity Search (high, 79), and level with Perplexity Search (low, 77).”
“Octen Search averages 0.2 seconds per query, 5x faster than the Perplexity Search variants at 1.0 to 1.2 seconds.”
“Octen Search costs $0.058 per Search Index task at a price of $1 per 1k search queries.”
postPerplexity's search API takes the top spots on the Artificial Analysis indexArtificial Analysis- article➤ Leaderboard: ➤ Methodology: ➤ Stirrup, our open-source agent harness: Search AArtificialAnlys
postAnnouncing the Artificial Analysis Search Index, benchmarking how search API…Artificial Analysis
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