Methodology

PeopleDataBenchmarks publishes empirical, reproducible benchmarks of people-data APIs. The rules below apply to every suite.

Frozen test sets

Every suite runs against a frozen, versioned test set (queries, companies or people) drawn before any provider is called. All providers answer the identical set within the same time window, via their native APIs, with each query translated to the provider's own taxonomy as faithfully as its API allows.

Blind grading and objective truth

Where a judgment call is needed (is this company really fintech?), grading is blind: the judge sees the record, never the provider. Where objective truth exists (does this email verify? does the profile show the person's current employer?), we grade against it directly — no judge to argue with. Empty results count against coverage, not accuracy; the two are reported separately.

Full audit trail

Every raw HTTP request, response and judge call is cached and published, so anyone can re-grade the entire leaderboard without re-spending API credits. Providers that hit quota or plan limits are excluded from that run and labeled as such — never scored as zero.

Review aggregation

Review pages aggregate what real users say across public platforms (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius) and communities (Reddit, Hacker News). Every claim links to its source, summaries are paraphrased rather than copied, ratings belong to their platforms, and pages carry the date they were collected. Providers can request corrections at any time.

Independence

No paid placement, no affiliate links. The dataset is released under CC BY 4.0. Providers win some suites and lose others; publishing the losses is what makes the wins credible.