Compare
AI market research platform buyer guide
The useful shortlist for an AI market research platform is four questions. Does the vendor publish an error metric? Against which benchmarks? At what n? How does a buyer start? On the calibrated 50-state benchmark, the average miss is 7.07 points on the best 80% of 1,521 scored questions, and 10.02 points across all of them. Pricing is scoped to your audiences and study volume on a short call. Your first qualified U.S. consumer Blind Challenge is free. Enterprise teams start with an 8-week pilot that rolls into an annual engagement. This page applies that rubric to vendors in the October 2, 2026 read. It is a field overview.
How to read the field
Synthetic research platforms split by artifact. Interview tools return themes. Enterprise simulators return a behavioral study. Tabulated panels return option shares you can score against a poll. Lewsearch is a tabulated panel: 650,000 census-grounded simulated Americans across 50 states and D.C., respondent-level records whose crosstabs add up, and the same simulated respondents re-asked across waves. Audiences can be fit to a client's own data and scored on the client's own past studies. Forecasts are frozen before the official number and graded in public: 3 wins, 1 miss, 3 awaiting a grade. Enterprise workloads run with no external model API calls. The comparison pages under /compare keep each vendor in its own unit.
If the job is behavioral simulation, Simile and Aaru publish that product (simile.com, aaru.com, checked October 2, 2026). If you need an audience built from your own customer data, with ISO 27001:2022, Electric Twin publishes that offer (electrictwin.com, checked October 2, 2026).
Worked shortlist: one grocery claim
You need a read on a new claim among shoppers in one state. A Simile or Aaru engagement, as those sites describe it, is behavioral simulation. Synthetic Users returns interviews (syntheticusers.com, checked October 2, 2026). FishDog describes a census population of 340,000 US individuals and says it publishes misses (fish.dog, checked October 2, 2026). Lewsearch would return option shares from simulated respondents. On the calibrated 50-state benchmark, the average miss is 7.07 points on the best 80% of 1,521 scored questions, and 10.02 points across all of them. The file is on /benchmarks/states. Book a demo. The team sets up the study with you. Your first qualified U.S. consumer Blind Challenge is free. Read the Blind Challenge.
| Vendor | Published accuracy unit | Engagement |
|---|---|---|
| Lewsearch | Calibrated 50-state benchmark: 7.07 points on the best 80% of 1,521 scored questions, 10.02 across all of them. | Scoped on a call. First qualified U.S. consumer Blind Challenge is free. Enterprise starts with an 8-week pilot. |
| Simile | 7,000+ evaluations. No percentage-point MAE (simile.com, checked October 2, 2026). | No price on the homepage (simile.com, checked October 2, 2026). |
| Aaru | TVD and MAE on 2,993 questions. Rank correlation and an average difference on 53 questions in a blinded EY wealth study (aaru.com, checked October 2, 2026). | No price on the homepage (aaru.com, checked October 2, 2026). |
| Synthetic Users | Thematic-parity range (syntheticusers.com, checked October 2, 2026). | Interview engagements described on syntheticusers.com (checked October 2, 2026). |
| Minds | Not in the October 2, 2026 vendor read. Re-read getminds.ai before quoting an agreement range. | Not in the October 2, 2026 vendor read. Re-read getminds.ai before describing how a buyer starts. |
| FishDog (formerly Ditto) | Homepage says misses are published. No error number on that fetch (fish.dog, checked October 2, 2026). | No price on the homepage (fish.dog, checked October 2, 2026). |
Limits of this guide
It keeps each vendor's metric in that vendor's unit. It does not invent a sample size a vendor did not print. Human panel houses remain the probability-sample option and are omitted here because they are a different purchase. If a competitor is missing, the October 2, 2026 read did not include a cell this table could quote.
Sources
Competitor cells cite the vendor pages in the October 2, 2026 read. Lewsearch cells cite the public benchmark file and /pricing.
FAQ
- What should a buyer ask an AI market research platform in 2026?
- Which error metric is published, against which benchmarks, at what n, and how the engagement is scoped. On the calibrated 50-state benchmark, the average miss is 7.07 points on the best 80% of 1,521 scored questions, and 10.02 points across all of them. Pricing is scoped to your audiences and study volume on a short call. Your first qualified U.S. consumer Blind Challenge is free. Enterprise teams start with an 8-week pilot that rolls into an annual engagement.
- What metrics do these vendors publish?
- Lewsearch: mean absolute error on a public-poll file. Aaru: TVD and MAE on 2,993 questions, plus a rank correlation and an average difference on 53 questions. Synthetic Users: a thematic-parity range. Simile: evaluation volume, and no percentage-point MAE. FishDog: a statement that misses are published, with no error number on the homepage fetch. Minds was not in the October 2, 2026 read. Do not average those figures. Each one was checked October 2, 2026.
- When should a team stay with a human sample?
- When the deliverable is a probability sample: litigation, a regulatory filing, or a number a journalist will print. A synthetic panel is a screen and a forecast with a published miss. It is a different object from that sample.
- Where are Lewsearch's numbers?
- On the calibrated 50-state benchmark, the average miss is 7.07 points on the best 80% of 1,521 scored questions, and 10.02 points across all of them. A narrower April test on 5 places with 10,000 respondents scored 7.47 points on 404 non-electoral questions. Every study is calibrated against published survey data before it reaches you. Enterprise panels are also calibrated to your own past studies, so the numbers line up with the tracker you already trust. The file is at /benchmarks/states. Pricing is scoped to your audiences and study volume on a short call. Your first qualified U.S. consumer Blind Challenge is free. Enterprise teams start with an 8-week pilot that rolls into an annual engagement.
Check the work
Related comparisons
Canonical: https://lewsearch.com/compare/ai-market-research-platform-buyer-guide