What is the best MCP server or skill for web research?

By tashan's measured score: Exa · exa-labs, Last30days, Firecrawl · firecrawl, Tavily · tavily-ai, Nimble. the score combines upkeep and freshness, gated by real adoption — every input is public and re-derivable, and no ranking position can be purchased.

Who does web research as part of their job?

This is a process step performed by Surveyors, per the O*NET 30.3 occupational database.

How is the ranking calculated?

From public signal only: npm download volume and publish cadence, GitHub push/release recency, contributor count, registry status, and how often a capability appears in real public agent configs. Nobody can pay to change a score, rank, or listing.

The Index · Web research

Web research

'Research' in the desk sense — finding current information beyond training data. tashan measures 26 capabilities for this work and ranks them by tashan score — a transparent composite of upkeep, freshness and real adoption. How we measure ›

#	Capability	tashan	Evidence	Health
1	Exa · exa-labs server solid Search	77	5k ★	active
2	Last30days server solid Productivity	77	54k ★	active
3	Firecrawl · firecrawl server deep Browser & Web	72	542 ★	active
4	Tavily · tavily-ai server solid Search	68	433 ★	active
5	Nimble server solid Dev Tools & CI	67	50 ★	active
6	Brave Search Skills server thin Search	67	161 ★	active
7	Parallel server solid Productivity	64	62 ★	active
8	Travel Search And Booking API And Skills server solid Other	62	880 ★	active
9	Serpapi Claude Plugin server solid Search	59	13 ★	active
10	Tinyfish server thin Productivity	59	14 ★	active
11	Phdtaketaketake server deep Dev Tools & CI	59	32 ★	active
12	Antigravity server solid Productivity	59	21 ★	active
13	Releases server Productivity	51	3 ★	active
14	Brightdata Plugin server Browser & Web	46	2 marketplaces	—
15	Comparative Landscape Brief server Productivity	45	1 marketplaces	active
16	Learn server Search	45	2 ★	active
17	Grep Research Skills server Data & Analytics	45	1 ★	active
18	Context7 · anthropics server Dev Tools & CI	42	1 marketplaces	—
·	YouTube Full skill Productivity	not scored yet	23k ★	active
·	Research Summarizer skill Docs & Knowledge	not scored yet	23k ★	active
·	Deep Research skill Productivity	not scored yet	23k ★	active
·	Dossier · alirezarezvani skill Productivity	not scored yet	23k ★	active
·	Pulse skill Search	not scored yet	23k ★	active
·	Research · alirezarezvani skill Search	not scored yet	23k ★	active
·	Composio Search Automation skill Productivity	not scored yet	70k ★	active
·	Google Maps Automation skill Productivity	not scored yet	70k ★	active

Who does this work

O*NET records this as a core process step for 1 occupations, including Surveyors.

Recorded there as: "Research topics in area of expertise" / "Conduct research to gain information about products or processes" / "Analyze information obtained from news sources". We publish it under the name practitioners use.

Other work

Agent configuration Agent development Animation and generated imagery Application development Attribution Bookkeeping Browser automation Code review Content marketing Contract review Copy editing Copywriting Dashboards and reporting Data pipelines Data quality Database access Debugging Design critique Document production Exploratory data analysis Financial modelling Incident response Infrastructure and deployment Knowledge management Literature review Market analysis Messaging and email Model evaluation Observability PRDs and specs Process automation Product strategy Project management Prompt engineering Query optimisation Regulatory compliance Retrieval systems Risk assessment SEO Sales pipeline Scientific research Security review Software architecture Statistical modelling Technical documentation Test automation Training material User research Video editing Visual design Web development Web scraping

Occupational data from the O*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, used under CC BY 4.0. tashan consolidated its process steps into the terms practitioners use; O*NET does not endorse this site.

See the full Index ›