> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.bensevern.dev/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# ER vendor comparison

> How GoldenMatch compares to other entity-resolution engines across OSS, identity-graph, cloud-managed, and enterprise MDM tiers.

This page summarizes the entity-resolution landscape as recorded in the repository's vendor comparison. The intent is honest positioning: where GoldenMatch leads, and where other engines lead.

<Note>
  Pricing is indicative, vendor surfaces change quickly, and academic F1 numbers are not enterprise outcomes on your real data. GoldenMatch numbers are reproducible from `docs/reproducing-benchmarks.md` in the repository.
</Note>

## GoldenMatch baseline

| Axis                | GoldenMatch                                                                             |
| ------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| License             | MIT (every package).                                                                    |
| Languages           | Python (headline) + TypeScript (parity) + Rust (Postgres/DuckDB).                       |
| Runtimes            | Polars (≤500K), DuckDB (500K–50M), Ray (≥50M); Postgres via pgrx; DuckDB UDFs; edge JS. |
| Throughput          | 1M dedupe in \~12.3 min on 4-core / 16 GB; 100K fuzzy \~39s.                            |
| Accuracy (DBLP-ACM) | F1 0.964 zero-config (hand-tuned ceiling 0.918).                                        |
| Accuracy (NCVR)     | F1 0.972 zero-config.                                                                   |
| Zero-config         | Introspective auto-config controller with cross-run memory and LLM fallback.            |
| PPRL                | Bloom-filter PPRL, F1 0.924 on FEBRL4.                                                  |
| AI-native surface   | 69 MCP tools, agent skills, REST API.                                                   |

## OSS engines

| Engine                | License                      | Where it beats GoldenMatch                                                                              | Where GoldenMatch beats it                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Splink (UK MoJ)       | MIT                          | Distributed Fellegi-Sunter at 1B+ rows (Spark); mature interactive m/u + comparison-viewer charting UI. | Non-PII accuracy (DBLP-ACM 0.964 vs 0.728); zero-config; polyglot; AI-native; PPRL. **Probabilistic head-to-head closed and reversed:** under the shared `bench_er_headtohead` evaluator (pairwise F1), GoldenMatch's probabilistic (Fellegi-Sunter) auto-config beats Splink on every dataset Splink scores — historical\_50k (Splink's flagship) 0.778 vs 0.757, febrl3 0.991 vs 0.965, synthetic\_person 0.998 vs 0.996 (and at the cluster level on historical\_50k, B-cubed F1 0.844 vs 0.789). These are **deterministic** as of #829. *(Pairwise F1 under one shared evaluator; the often-cited \~0.97 on historical\_50k is a cluster/entity-level metric, not exhaustive within-cluster pairwise F1 — Splink itself is \~0.75 pairwise here under the same harness. Splink skips bibliographic dblp\_acm; the probabilistic path is weak there (0.377) — use the weighted controller, which scores 0.964. Full bake-off: `docs/benchmarks/2026-06-09-splink-bakeoff.md`.)* The `type: probabilistic` matchkey also has EM-trained m/u, supervised m from labels, model persistence, match-weight waterfall, posterior calibration, and label-driven threshold analysis, plus FS scale-out on the bucket/Ray path (measured 6M dedupe in 162.6 s / 11.3 GB single-node). |
| dedupe.io             | BSD                          | Cleanest active-learning UX in OSS.                                                                     | Accuracy without labels; throughput at scale; polyglot; AI-native; PPRL.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         |
| RecordLinkage Toolkit | BSD                          | DBLP-ACM F1 0.923 (narrowly).                                                                           | Throughput, scale, PPRL, AI-native, zero-config, polyglot.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| Zingg                 | AGPL + commercial            | Native Spark scale.                                                                                     | MIT license; polyglot; AI-native; zero-config; PPRL.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             |
| Senzing G2 CE         | Apache wrapper + closed core | Native identity graph; bundled reference data; real-time latency.                                       | OSS license; zero-config; AI-native; bibliographic/product matching; PPRL.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |

## Identity-graph and cloud-managed

| Engine                 | Where it beats GoldenMatch                                     | Where GoldenMatch beats it                                                        |
| ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Quantexa               | Graph-native output; decisioning layer; enterprise governance. | OSS and composable; time-to-value; AI-native; cost.                               |
| Tilores                | Identity-graph engine; GraphQL API; hosted by default.         | OSS; edge runtimes; zero-config; AI-native; PPRL.                                 |
| AWS Entity Resolution  | Scale is AWS's problem; Glue/Lake Formation integration.       | Portability (laptop, Postgres, edge worker); zero-config; AI-native; multi-cloud. |
| Snowflake Cortex Match | Runs in-warehouse, no data movement.                           | Full engine (blocking, clustering, golden records); portable; published F1.       |

## Research SOTA

| Engine          | Where it beats GoldenMatch                                                              | Where GoldenMatch beats it                                                                |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Ditto (Megagon) | Abt-Buy F1 0.893 (product-matching SOTA) vs GoldenMatch 0.722 (+LLM) / 0.817 (+Vertex). | No training labels; non-product domains; throughput; AI-native; cheaper than fine-tuning. |

## Cross-cutting observations

* **Zero-config is uncontested.** No other vendor publishes zero-config benchmark numbers.
* **Identity graph is the next frontier.** Mainstream OSS engines emit clusters; Senzing, Quantexa, and Tilores emit a graph.
* **AI-native is uncontested but unproven.** Nobody else ships MCP, agent skills, or LLM-budget-controlled borderline scoring.
* **License matters.** MIT and BSD engines have outgrown AGPL and closed-core peers partly on embedding permissions.
* **Portability is the wedge** against warehouse-native managed services: the same engine runs in app code, an edge worker, or a Postgres trigger.
