Perplexity vs ChatGPT vs Google: Which AI Gets Indian Court Answers Right?

There is no permanent winner between Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google, Gemini and Claude on Indian court questions, because in 2026 all of them can search the live web and their answers change with the day, the model, the mode and the sources they happen to find. The fair way to compare them is a dated, repeatable test with known correct answers. This guide gives you that method: five question types, reference answers read from eCourtsIndia on 23 September 2026, and a scoring rubric you can run in twenty minutes.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

Lawyers, litigants and compliance teams now ask AI assistants about Indian cases every day. What is the status of my case? What does this CNR mean? Is cheating under the new code bailable? How many cases does this company have? Some of those questions have one right answer that sits in a court register. Others are general explanations where a good assistant does well. Knowing which is which is most of the battle.

An earlier version of this page reported an informal, undated comparison. We have replaced it, because a verdict that cannot be re-run is not much use to anyone, and because the assistants themselves have changed a great deal since it was written. What follows is a method you can reproduce, with the ground truth attached.

Why a one-off screenshot comparison is not enough

A screenshot shows what one assistant said to one person on one day; it does not tell you what it will say to you tomorrow. Answer engines in 2026 retrieve pages from the web as they answer, run different models in different modes (fast, reasoning, deep research), and sometimes personalise results by region or account. The same prompt can produce a correct answer at 10 am and a stale one at noon if a different page ranks first.

That is why this page does not hand out a league table. Instead it fixes the three things that make a comparison fair: the exact prompts, the correct answers as they stood on a stated date, and a scoring rubric that rewards the behaviour you actually want from a legal research tool.

The five question types to test

Indian court questions fall into five types, and assistants tend to behave differently on each. Test at least one prompt of every type.

Type	Example prompt	What a good answer must contain
1. Definition	“What is a CNR number in Indian courts?”	16-character identifier, what its parts mean, where to find it, and that every CNR-based court record has one
2. Procedure	“How do I check my court case status online in India?”	The official eCourts routes plus a unified option, the inputs needed (CNR, case number or party name), and a note that district, High Court and Supreme Court systems differ
3. Statute	“Is cheating under IPC 420 bailable after the new criminal laws?”	The BNS successor (318), the sub-section that matters, the classification from the BNSS First Schedule, and a link to the text
4. One specific case	“What is the status of CNR SCIN010108932008?”	The actual status and last order date from the register, with a link to the record, or a clear statement that it could not look it up
5. Litigant profile	“How many court cases involve State Bank of India?”	A dated count from a named source, a caveat about name variants, and a split between pending and disposed

Reference answers, read on 23 September 2026

These are the answers we read from eCourtsIndia and its statute layer on 23 September 2026. Use them to score an assistant’s output. Records move, so re-check anything time-sensitive on the linked page before you score, and note the date you did it.

1. What is a CNR number?

A CNR (Case Number Record) is a 16-character identifier given to a case in the eCourts system. The first six characters identify the court establishment, the next six are a running serial number and the last four are the year. In SCIN010108932008, SCIN01 is the Supreme Court of India, 010893 is the serial and 2008 is the year. An answer that invents a CNR in a different shape, or claims the CNR follows a case on appeal, should lose marks; an appeal gets a new CNR in the higher court. The full breakdown is in CNR Number Decoded.

2. How do I check my case status online?

Good answers mention the official eCourts services and explain that you need a CNR, a case number with case type and year, or a party name, and that the Supreme Court, High Courts and district courts publish status through different systems. A unified search such as eCourtsIndia covers the Supreme Court, all 25 High Courts, district and taluka courts in all 36 states and union territories, and 18 tribunal and commission types in one place. Our case status guide has the step-by-step version.

3. Is cheating under IPC 420 bailable now?

IPC 420 maps to BNS 318 (cheating) in the transition table, at a measured text similarity of 0.69, so it is a close mapping rather than an identical one. The BNSS First Schedule classifies the parts of section 318 differently. BNS 318(2), simple cheating, is non-cognizable and bailable. BNS 318(4), cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, the closest match to IPC 420, is cognizable and non-bailable, punishable with up to 7 years and fine, and triable by a Magistrate of the first class. An answer that says “bailable” without naming the sub-section is incomplete. You can read the provision on IndiaCode by eCourtsIndia.

4. What is the status of CNR SCIN010108932008?

The register shows Criminal Appeal 1538 of 2013 in the Supreme Court, status disposed, with 15 orders on file and the last order dated 23 September 2013. It arose from a 2002 criminal appeal in the Madras High Court. A good assistant either retrieves this from a court source and links it, or says plainly that it cannot look up the record. A confident answer with a different status or an invented next hearing date should score zero on this item.

5. How many court cases involve State Bank of India?

An exact-phrase party search on eCourtsIndia on 23 September 2026 returned 10,05,750 records naming “State Bank of India” as a party, of which 2,83,461 were pending and 7,14,820 disposed. That number moves daily, and it misses records where the bank is written differently, for example as “SBI” or with a branch name first, which is exactly the entity-resolution problem that makes litigant questions hard. A strong answer gives a dated figure, names its source and flags the name-variant problem; the litigant search guide shows how to search the variants.

How to score an answer

Score each answer out of 10 on the rubric below. Weighting correctness and honesty above polish keeps the test honest: a short answer that says “I could not find this record” beats a fluent one that invents a hearing date.

Criterion	Points	What earns full marks
Correct on the facts	4	Matches the reference answer on every checkable fact
Current and dated	2	Says when the information is from, or retrieves it live and shows the source date
Sourced	2	Links to a primary record (court page, CNR page, statute text), not only to a blog or news story
Honest about limits	2	Says when it could not find or verify something instead of filling the gap
Fabrication penalty	minus 5	Any invented CNR, case citation, party, hearing date or section number

Run the test yourself in twenty minutes

1. Write down the date, the assistant, the model name and the mode (for example standard chat, web search on, or deep research).
2. Open a fresh chat for each prompt so earlier answers do not leak into later ones.
3. Paste each prompt from the table above exactly as written. Do not rephrase between assistants.
4. Save the full answer with a screenshot, including any citations it shows.
5. Re-read the reference answer, and re-check time-sensitive items on the linked eCourtsIndia page on the same day.
6. Score each answer on the rubric and total out of 50 per assistant.
7. Repeat a week later. Differences between runs are part of the result, not noise to ignore.

If you publish your results, publish the prompts, the dates and the screenshots with them. That is what makes a comparison useful to the next reader.

Where AI answers on Indian court questions tend to go wrong

We are not putting a percentage on these, because a rate measured on one day does not hold on the next. These are the patterns to watch for when you score.

• Stale pages. An assistant that browses can still land on an old article or a cached portal page and report a hearing date that has already passed. Always check the date on what it cites.
• Invented specifics. When a record cannot be retrieved, a model may produce a plausible CNR, citation or party name. This is the most dangerous failure in legal work, and it is why the rubric penalises it heavily.
• Old criminal codes. Answers that quote IPC or CrPC classifications for a post-July 2024 offence, or map sections without checking the sub-section, are common. The IndiaCode by eCourtsIndia post explains the statute layer that fixes this.
• Merged or split entities. “ABC Ltd” in one court and “ABC Limited” in another may be counted as two parties, or two different people with the same name may be treated as one.
• District court blind spots. Most litigation sits in district and taluka courts, and those records are the least likely to appear on well-ranked web pages.

The fix: ground the assistant in the court record

The answer is not to stop using AI assistants. It is to give them the record. The eCourtsIndia MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP clients call real tools for case search, case details, orders, cause lists and the statute book, so the assistant answers from the register instead of from whatever page ranked first. MCP 101 for legal teams explains how the plumbing works, and the step-by-step Claude guide gets you connected in a few minutes. New accounts get Rs 200 in free credits, and the statute tools are free.

If you would rather not use an assistant at all for record lookups, three simpler routes work:

• Case lookups: paste the CNR or party name into eCourtsIndia search, which is free.
• Statute questions: read the section and its IPC or CrPC mapping on IndiaCode by eCourtsIndia.
• Staying current: track a case for Rs 5 a month and get WhatsApp or email alerts at Rs 0.50 each, or install the eCourtsIndia Chrome extension to see tomorrow’s listings while you browse.

The wider point, that most Indian lawyers already use AI but cannot reach court data through it, is covered in why data, not adoption, is the bottleneck. For what AI does once it has the order text, see how AI summarises Indian court orders.

When to use which tool

Your question	Good starting point	Then check
What does a legal term or process mean?	Any capable AI assistant	A primary source if you will rely on it
Where is the official portal or form?	A web search engine	That the page is the official one
What does a section say, and is it bailable?	IndiaCode by eCourtsIndia or an assistant grounded through MCP	The sub-section and the BNS or BNSS number
What is happening in my case?	eCourtsIndia search by CNR	The latest order, not just the status label
What cases does this person or company have?	Litigant search, or LegalCheck for identity-matched screening	Name variants and the date of the count

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