Making use of two different analytical–numerical methods for capacity computation, we obtain matching to a very high precision numerical values for capacities of a wide family of planar condensers. These two methods are based respectively on the use of the Lauricella function (Bezrodnykh and Vlasov, 2002; Bezrodnykh, 2016 [64,65]) and Riemann theta functions (Bogatyrëv, 2012; Grigoriev, 2013; Bogatyrëv and Grigor'ev, 2017; Bogatyrëv and Grigor'ev, 2018). We apply these results to benchmark the performance of numerical algorithms, which are based on adaptive hp-finite element method (Hakula et al. 2011, 2013, 2018) and boundary integral method (Tsuji, 1959; Jaswon and Symm, 1977; Albrecht and Collatz, 1980). © 2019 Elsevier B.V.