Assessment of time-dependent density functional schemes for computing the oscillator strengths of benzene, phenol, aniline, and fluorobenzene J. Chem. Phys. 127, 084103 (2007) Equation of motion coupled-cluster singles and doubles ͑EOM-CCSD͒ is one of the most accurate computational methods for the description of one-electron vertical transitions. However, its O͑N 6 ͒ scaling, where N is the number of basis functions, often makes the study of molecules larger than 10-15 heavy atoms prohibitive. In this work we investigate how accurately less expensive methods can approximate the EOM-CCSD results. We focus on our own N-layer integrated molecular orbital molecular mechanics ͑ONIOM͒ hybrid scheme, where the system is partitioned into regions which are treated with different levels of theory. For our set of benchmark calculations, the comparison of conventional configuration interaction singles ͑CIS͒, time-dependent Hartree-Fock ͑TDHF͒, and time-dependent density functional theory ͑TDDFT͒ methods and ONIOM ͑with different low level methods͒ showed that the best accuracy-computational time combination is obtained with ONIOM͑EOM:TDDFT͒, which has a rms of the error with respect to the conventional EOM-CCSD of 0.06 eV, compared with 0.47 eV of the conventional TDDFT.