Benchmark Almanac

Arena-Hard v2.0

Qwen3-Max 90.2% leads since January 2026
o3 85.9% leads since April 2025
Qwen3-Max 90.2% leads since January 2026
Fading

Models answer 500 hard real user prompts from Chatbot Arena and 250 creative writing prompts. GPT-4.1 or Gemini 2.5 judges each answer against a baseline answer from o3-mini, and the score is the win rate.

Released on April 23rd, 2025 with new prompts, new judges and a new baseline (o3-mini at 50.0). Scores are not comparable with Arena-Hard-Auto v0.1. Labs often report the hard prompt split only.

Released
April 2025
Kind
Overall chat quality
Level
University
Scored
Graded by a model
Answers
Open-ended
Tasks
All public
Strongest model tested
o3 #83 on the capability index
Last in a launch post
August 2026, dropped after it saturated
Last model added
August 2026
Scores refreshed
November 12th, 2026

In the authors’ words

The rapid evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) has outpaced the development of model evaluation, highlighting the need for continuous curation of new, challenging benchmarks. However, manual curation of high-quality, human-aligned benchmarks is expensive and time-consuming. To address this, we introduce BenchBuilder, an automated pipeline that leverages LLMs to curate high-quality, open-ended prompts from large, crowd-sourced datasets, enabling continuous benchmark updates without human in the loop. We apply BenchBuilder to datasets such as Chatbot Arena and WildChat-1M, extracting challenging prompts and utilizing LLM-as-a-Judge for automatic model evaluation. To validate benchmark quality, we propose new metrics to measure a benchmark's alignment with human preferences and ability to separate models. We release Arena-Hard-Auto, a benchmark consisting 500 challenging prompts curated by BenchBuilder. Arena-Hard-Auto provides 3x higher separation of model performances compared to MT-Bench and achieves 98.6% correlation with human preference rankings, all at a cost of $20. Our work sets a new framework for the scalable curation of automated benchmarks from extensive data.

Abstract of From Crowdsourced Data to High-Quality Benchmarks: Arena-Hard and BenchBuilder Pipeline (arXiv:2406.11939, CC0)
24
Models scored in lab cards
20
Launch posts list it, from 10 labs
14
System cards report it, from 9 labs

Qwen3-Max leads with 90.2% among models released by August 2026

Best score per model as labs report them in their own cards. Labs pick their own settings, so these compare less cleanly than independent runs.

o3 leads with 85.9% across all independent runs

Best score per model across the official leaderboard, Epoch AI’s own runs and any board Epoch AI copied. Each bar and row names its source.

Qwen3-Max leads with 90.2%, claims included

Best score per model from every source, including labs’ own numbers and claims Epoch AI collected from reports and papers. Labs pick their own settings, so a claim can beat an independent run of the same model.

The newest model with a score here came out in August 2026, and nobody has reported a newer one. Among the 20 highest-ranked models on the capability index, these have no score yet:

  1. 1 Qwen3-Max 90.2%
  2. 2 LongCat-Flash-Chat 86.5%
  3. 3 Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B 83.5%
  4. 4 Ring-1T 81.6%
  5. 5 Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking Jul 2025 79.7%
  6. 6 Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B 74.8%
  7. 7 Solar Open 100B 74.8%
  8. 8 Solar Pro 3 (March 2026 update) 74.7%
  9. 9 Step 3.5 Flash 74%
  10. 10 Nemotron 3 Super 73.9%
  11. 11 Sarvam 105B 71%
  12. 12 LongCat-Flash-Thinking 69.9%
  13. 13 Granite 4.2 30B 67.9%
  14. 14 Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B 67.7%
  15. 15 Solar Pro 3 62.5%
  16. 16 Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B 62.3%
  17. 17 STEP3-VL-10B 58.6%
  18. 18 Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B 55.1%
  19. 19 Kimi K2 Jul 2025 54.5%
  20. 20 MiMo-V2-Flash 54.1%
  21. 21 Sarvam 30B 49%
  22. 22 Solar Pro 2 46.2%
  23. 23 Baichuan-M2-32B 45.8%
  24. 24 Mistral Small 3.2 43.1%

Source: Labs’ model cards

Sources: Labs’ model cards and official Arena-Hard v2.0 leaderboard

#ModelScoreSettingDateSource
1 Qwen3-Max 90.2% Jan 2026 Lab model card
2 LongCat-Flash-Chat 86.5% Aug 2025 Lab model card
3 Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B 83.5% Mar 2026 Lab model card
4 Ring-1T 81.6% Oct 2025 Lab model card
5 Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking Jul 2025 79.7% Jul 2025 Lab model card
6 Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B 74.8% Nov 2025 Lab model card
7 Solar Open 100B 74.8% Dec 2025 Lab model card
8 Solar Pro 3 (March 2026 update) 74.7% Mar 2026 Lab model card
9 Step 3.5 Flash 74% Feb 2026 Lab model card
10 Nemotron 3 Super 73.9% Mar 2026 Lab model card
11 Sarvam 105B 71% Mar 2026 Lab model card
12 LongCat-Flash-Thinking 69.9% Sep 2025 Lab model card
13 Granite 4.2 30B 67.9% Aug 2026 Lab model card
14 Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B 67.7% Dec 2025 Lab model card
15 Solar Pro 3 62.5% Jan 2026 Lab model card
16 Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B 62.3% Sep 2025 Lab model card
17 STEP3-VL-10B 58.6% Jan 2026 Lab model card
18 Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B 55.1% Sep 2025 Lab model card
19 Kimi K2 Jul 2025 54.5% Jul 2025 Lab model card
20 MiMo-V2-Flash 54.1% Dec 2025 Lab model card
21 Sarvam 30B 49% Mar 2026 Lab model card
22 Solar Pro 2 46.2% Jul 2025 Lab model card
23 Baichuan-M2-32B 45.8% Aug 2025 Lab model card
24 Mistral Small 3.2 43.1% Jun 2025 Lab model card
#ModelScoreSettingDateSource
1 o3 85.9% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
2 o4-mini 79.1% high Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
3 Gemini 2.5 Pro Mar 2025 79% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
4 Gemini 2.5 Flash Apr 2025 68.6% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
5 o3-mini 66.1% high Jan 2025 Official leaderboard
6 o1 61% high Dec 2024 Official leaderboard
7 Claude 3.7 Sonnet 59.8% thinking 16k Feb 2025 Official leaderboard
8 Qwen3-235B-A22B 58.4% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
9 DeepSeek-R1 58% Jan 2025 Official leaderboard
10 GPT-4.5 50% Feb 2025 Official leaderboard
11 GPT-4.1 50% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
12 GPT-4.1 mini 46.9% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
13 Qwen3-32B 44.5% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
14 QwQ-32B 43.5% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
15 Qwen3-30B-A3B 33.9% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
16 Claude 3.5 Sonnet (October 2024) 33% Oct 2024 Official leaderboard
17 Llama 4 Maverick 17.2% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
18 Athene-V2-Chat 16.4% Nov 2024 Official leaderboard
19 Gemma 3 27B 15% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
20 Qwen3-4B 15% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
21 GPT-4.1 nano 13.7% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
22 Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct 10.3% Oct 2024 Official leaderboard
23 Qwen2.5-72B 10.1% Sep 2024 Official leaderboard
#ModelScoreSettingDateSource
1 Qwen3-Max 90.2% Jan 2026 Lab model card
2 LongCat-Flash-Chat 86.5% Aug 2025 Lab model card
3 o3 85.9% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
4 Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B 83.5% Mar 2026 Lab model card
5 Ring-1T 81.6% Oct 2025 Lab model card
6 Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking Jul 2025 79.7% Jul 2025 Lab model card
7 o4-mini 79.1% high Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
8 Gemini 2.5 Pro Mar 2025 79% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
9 Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B 74.8% Nov 2025 Lab model card
10 Solar Open 100B 74.8% Dec 2025 Lab model card
11 Solar Pro 3 (March 2026 update) 74.7% Mar 2026 Lab model card
12 Step 3.5 Flash 74% Feb 2026 Lab model card
13 Nemotron 3 Super 73.9% Mar 2026 Lab model card
14 Sarvam 105B 71% Mar 2026 Lab model card
15 LongCat-Flash-Thinking 69.9% Sep 2025 Lab model card
16 Gemini 2.5 Flash Apr 2025 68.6% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
17 Granite 4.2 30B 67.9% Aug 2026 Lab model card
18 Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B 67.7% Dec 2025 Lab model card
19 o3-mini 66.1% high Jan 2025 Official leaderboard
20 Solar Pro 3 62.5% Jan 2026 Lab model card
21 Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B 62.3% Sep 2025 Lab model card
22 o1 61% high Dec 2024 Official leaderboard
23 Claude 3.7 Sonnet 59.8% thinking 16k Feb 2025 Official leaderboard
24 STEP3-VL-10B 58.6% Jan 2026 Lab model card
25 Qwen3-235B-A22B 58.4% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
26 DeepSeek-R1 58% Jan 2025 Official leaderboard
27 Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B 55.1% Sep 2025 Lab model card
28 Kimi K2 Jul 2025 54.5% Jul 2025 Lab model card
29 MiMo-V2-Flash 54.1% Dec 2025 Lab model card
30 GPT-4.5 50% Feb 2025 Official leaderboard
31 GPT-4.1 50% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
32 Sarvam 30B 49% Mar 2026 Lab model card
33 GPT-4.1 mini 46.9% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
34 Solar Pro 2 46.2% Jul 2025 Lab model card
35 Baichuan-M2-32B 45.8% Aug 2025 Lab model card
36 Qwen3-32B 44.5% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
37 QwQ-32B 43.5% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
38 Mistral Small 3.2 43.1% Jun 2025 Lab model card
39 Qwen3-30B-A3B 33.9% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
40 Claude 3.5 Sonnet (October 2024) 33% Oct 2024 Official leaderboard
41 Llama 4 Maverick 17.2% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
42 Athene-V2-Chat 16.4% Nov 2024 Official leaderboard
43 Gemma 3 27B 15% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
44 Qwen3-4B 15% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
45 GPT-4.1 nano 13.7% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
46 Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct 10.3% Oct 2024 Official leaderboard
47 Qwen2.5-72B 10.1% Sep 2024 Official leaderboard

The benchmark's own leaderboard has 25 entries, 23 of them models we track. Switch the scores above to rank them together.

Scores at each effort level

Models the leaderboard ran at two or more effort levels. We don’t have enough cost data here to say what the extra effort costs.

Lowest effort to highest, light to dark
o4-mini
high
79.1%
o3-mini
high
66.1%
o1
high
61%

Source: Official Arena-Hard v2.0 leaderboard

6 models have held number one in labs’ own numbers since its release in April 2025 2 models have held number one across all independent runs since its release in April 2025 4 models have held number one with claims included since its release in April 2025

Lab claims count from the day the card came out, independent runs from the model’s release. We draw one row each for the benchmark’s own leaderboard and what labs claim in their cards.

Google DeepMind OpenAI Mistral AI Upstage Moonshot AI Qwen Meituan
Own leaderboard Passed 85% in Apr 2025, by o3
o3 85.9%
Lab claims Passed 85% in Aug 2025, by LongCat-Flash-Chat
Qwen3-Max 90.2%

Sources: Official Arena-Hard v2.0 leaderboard and labs’ model cards

O3 on the official leaderboard passed 85% in April 2025

All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.

On the benchmark’s own leaderboard Reported by the lab in its model card Best so far
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2025 2026 Near the ceiling (85%) Qwen3-Max LongCat-Flash-Chat o3 Gemini 2.5 Pro o3-mini o1 Claude 3.5 Sonnet (October 2024) 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2025 2026 Near the ceiling (85%) Qwen3-Max Gemini 2.5 Pro

Sources: Official Arena-Hard v2.0 leaderboard and labs’ model cards

Labs headline it less often now, last in August 2026

Launch posts from every lab that has listed it, one tick per post. Tall colored ticks include it, and short gray ones leave it out.

Mistral AI
Upstage
Qwen
Baichuan
Meituan
Ant Group
NVIDIA
Xiaomi Corp
Sarvam AI
IBM
DateLaunch postScoreAs the post writes it
Aug 25, 2026 Granite 4.2 30B 67.9 Arena-Hard-V2
Mar 24, 2026 Solar Pro 3 (March 2026 update) 74.7 Arena-hard-v2
Mar 19, 2026 Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B 83.5 ArenaHard v2 (Avg.); Hard Prompt 88.2, Creative Writing 78.7
Mar 11, 2026 Nemotron 3 Super 73.9 Arena-Hard-V2
Mar 6, 2026 Sarvam 30B 49 Arena Hard v2
Mar 6, 2026 Sarvam 105B 71 Arena Hard v2
Jan 26, 2026 Solar Pro 3 62.5 Arena Hard v2
Jan 23, 2026 Qwen3-Max 90.2 Arena-Hard v2
Dec 31, 2025 Solar Open 100B 74.8 Arena Hard v2
Dec 16, 2025 MiMo-V2-Flash 54.1 Arena-Hard (Hard Prompt) 54.1, Creative Writing 86.2
Dec 15, 2025 Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B 67.7 Arena-Hard-V2 (Average); Hard Prompt 72.1, Creative Writing 63.2
Oct 10, 2025 Ring-1T 81.6 Arena-Hard-v2.0 (win-rate)
Sep 22, 2025 Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B 55.1 Arena-Hard v2 (Thinking variant)
Sep 21, 2025 LongCat-Flash-Thinking 69.9 Arena-Hard(hard prompt gemini)
Sep 11, 2025 Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B 62.3 Arena-Hard v2* (win rate judged by GPT-4.1)
Aug 29, 2025 LongCat-Flash-Chat 86.5 ArenaHard-V2(acc)
Aug 10, 2025 Baichuan-M2-32B 45.8 Arena-Hard-v2.0
Jul 25, 2025 Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking 79.7 Arena-Hard v2$
Jul 10, 2025 Solar Pro 2 46.2 Arena-Hard-v2.0
Jun 20, 2025 Mistral Small 3.2 43.1 Arena Hard v2

14 system cards report it, from 9 labs

Besides launch posts, we read the system cards, model cards and technical reports labs publish with a release. They report far more, including safety and frontier-risk tests.

DateDocumentScoreAs the document writes itSection
Mar 19, 2026 Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B technical report 83.5 ArenaHard v2 (Avg.) (Table 1). Hard Prompt 88.2, Creative Writing 78.7 Capabilities
Mar 11, 2026 Nemotron 3 Super technical report 73.9 Arena-Hard-V2 (Hard Prompt) (Tables 5 and 8) Capabilities
Feb 11, 2026 Step 3.5 Flash technical report 74 Arena-Hard-v2.0, GPT-4.1 judge (Table 5). PaCoRe 93.1 Capabilities
Jan 14, 2026 STEP3-VL-10B technical report 58.6 Arena-Hard-V2, SeRe (Table 2) Capabilities
Jan 11, 2026 Solar Open 100B technical report 74.8 Arena Hard v2 (Table 6) Capabilities
Jan 6, 2026 MiMo-V2-Flash technical report 54.1 Arena-Hard (Hard Prompt) 54.1, Arena-Hard (Creative Writing) 86.2 (Table 9) Capabilities
Dec 23, 2025 Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B technical report 67.7 Arena-Hard-V2 (Average), GPT-4.1 judge (Table 3). Hard Prompt 72.10, Creative Writing 63.20 Capabilities
Nov 26, 2025 Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B technical report 74.8 Arena-Hard V2 (winrate) (Table 6) Capabilities
Oct 21, 2025 Ring-1T technical report 81.6 ArenaHard v2 (win-rate) (Table 1). ArenaHard v2 (Elo) 84.52 Capabilities
Sep 23, 2025 LongCat-Flash-Thinking technical report 69.9 Arena-Hard(hard prompt gemini) (Table 2) Capabilities
Sep 22, 2025 Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B technical report 55.1 Arena-Hard v2, Thinking only (Table 5) Capabilities
Sep 2, 2025 Baichuan-M2-32B technical report 45.8 Arena-Hard-V2.0 (Table 1) Capabilities
Sep 1, 2025 LongCat-Flash-Chat technical report 86.5 ArenaHard-V2 (acc) (Table 3) Capabilities
Jul 21, 2025 Kimi K2 technical report 54.5 Arena Hard v2.0 Hard Prompt (Win rate). Creative Writing (Win rate) 85.0 (Table 3) Capabilities

Versions

We switch the top row to each new version when it comes out. Open it for one row per version. An old version stays in play while people still test it, so whoever first takes it past 85% gets credit for closing it out.

Qwen Mistral AI DeepSeek MiniMax Upstage Moonshot AI Meituan
Arena-Hard v2.0 Passed 85% in Aug 2025, by LongCat-Flash-Chat
Qwen3-Max 90.2%
Arena-Hard-Auto Passed 85% in Dec 2024, by DeepSeek-V3
Arena-Hard v2.0 Passed 85% in Aug 2025, by LongCat-Flash-Chat
Qwen3-Max 90.2%

Source: Labs’ model cards

More in Instructions and chat

All 81 in Instructions and chat
  • IFEval In use Models answer about 500 prompts containing verifiable instructions such as word limits or required keywords. Code checks each instruction for strict and loose accuracy. Gemma 4 31B IT 98.9%
  • IFBench In use 58 new out-of-domain verifiable output constraints. Scored by programmatic constraint checks (strict or loose). Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B 82.9%
  • MultiChallenge In use Multi-turn conversations testing instruction retention, inference memory, versioned editing and self-coherence. Graded by LLM judge with rubrics. GPT-6.1 Sol 82%
  • Multi-IF In use Models follow verifiable instructions over three-turn conversations in eight languages, extending IFEval. Scored by instruction accuracy at each turn. LFM3-1.7B 89.1%
  • AdvancedIF In use Models respond to over 1,600 prompts with complex, multi-turn, and system-level instructions. A judge model checks each response against expert-written rubrics. MAI-Thinking-1 85%
  • IFStruct In use Models generate JSON or YAML that must follow a requested schema and phrasing constraints, without constrained decoding. A response passes only if every structural constraint holds. Gemma 4 31B IT 95.9%