BrowseComp-Plus
Deep research agents answer 830 BrowseComp questions by searching a fixed corpus of about 100,000 human-verified documents.
BrowseComp-Plus is a different evaluation from BrowseComp. Labs use different retrievers and graders, so scores vary by setup.
- Made by
- University of Waterloo and collaborators
- Released
- August 2025
- Kind
- Deep research
- Level
- Expert
- Scored
- Graded by a model
- Answers
- Short answer
- Tasks
- All public
- Strongest model tested
- Claude Opus 4.5 #61 on the capability index
- Last in a launch post
- October 2026
- Last model added
- October 2026
- Scores refreshed
- November 12th, 2026
In the authors’ words
Deep-Research agents, which integrate large language models (LLMs) with search tools, have shown success in improving the effectiveness of handling complex queries that require iterative search planning and reasoning over search results. Evaluations on current benchmarks like BrowseComp relies on black-box live web search APIs, have notable limitations in (1) fairness: dynamic and opaque web APIs hinder fair comparisons and reproducibility of deep research methods; (2) transparency: lack of control over the document corpus makes it difficult to isolate retriever contributions. In other words, the current evaluations may compare a complete deep research system at a given time, but they do not foster well-controlled experiments to provide insights into the capability of underlying deep research LLMs. To address these challenges, we introduce BrowseComp-Plus, a benchmark derived from BrowseComp, employing a fixed, carefully curated corpus. Each query in BrowseComp-Plus includes human-verified supporting documents and mined challenging negatives, enabling controlled experimentation. The benchmark is shown to be effective in distinguishing the performance of deep research systems. For instance, the open-source model Search-R1, when paired with the BM25 retriever, achieves 3.86% accuracy, whereas the GPT-5 achieves 55.9%. Integrating the GPT-5 with the Qwen3-Embedding-8B retriever further enhances its accuracy to 70.1% with fewer search calls. This benchmark allows comprehensive evaluation and disentangled analysis of deep research agents and retrieval methods, fostering insights into retrieval effectiveness, citation accuracy, and context engineering in Deep-Research system.
GPT-5 leads with 70.1% among models released by August 2025
Best score per entry from the benchmark's own leaderboard, read on November 12th, 2026. Where a model ran with several settings or harnesses, we keep its best. Names in gray aren't in our model list: fine-tunes, agent systems, products and older models. They don't count toward leaders.
GPT-5 leads with 70.1%, 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 2025, and nobody has tested a newer one. Among the 20 highest-ranked models on the capability index, these have no score yet:
- Claude Fable 5.2
-
Gemini 4 Carbon
- GPT-6 Astra
- Claude Opus 5.5
- and 16 more
- 1 GPT-5 70.1%
- 2 o3 63.5%
- 3 gpt-oss-120b high 42.9%
- 4 Claude Sonnet 4 36.8%
- 5 Claude Opus 4 36.1%
- 6 GPT-4.1 35.4%
- 7 Gemini 2.5 Flash (snapshot unspecified) 33%
- 8 Gemini 2.5 Pro (snapshot unspecified) 28.7%
- 9 SearchR1-32B 10.4%
- 10
Qwen3-32B 10.4%
Source: Official BrowseComp-Plus leaderboard
- 1 GPT-5 70.1%
- 2 Claude Opus 4.5 67.6%
- 3 o3 63.5%
- 4 Mercury 3 55.2%
- 5 gpt-oss-120b high 42.9%
- 6 LFM3-1.7B 37%
- 7 Claude Sonnet 4 36.8%
- 8 Claude Opus 4 36.1%
- 9 GPT-4.1 35.4%
- 10 LFM2.5-2.6B 26.9%
- 11
Qwen3-32B 10.4%
Sources: Official BrowseComp-Plus leaderboard and labs’ model cards
| # | Entry | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-5 | 70.1% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Aug 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 2 | o3 | 63.5% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Apr 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 3 | gpt-oss-120b | 42.9% | high, Qwen3-Embed-8B | Aug 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 4 | Claude Sonnet 4 | 36.8% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | May 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 5 | Claude Opus 4 | 36.1% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | May 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 6 | GPT-4.1 | 35.4% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Apr 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 7 | Gemini 2.5 Flash (snapshot unspecified) | 33% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Official leaderboard | |
| 8 | Gemini 2.5 Pro (snapshot unspecified) | 28.7% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Official leaderboard | |
| 9 | SearchR1-32B | 10.4% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Official leaderboard | |
| 10 | | 10.4% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Apr 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| # | Model | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-5 | 70.1% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Aug 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 2 | Claude Opus 4.5 | 67.6% | Nov 2025 | Lab model card | |
| 3 | o3 | 63.5% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Apr 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 4 | Mercury 3 | 55.2% | Oct 2026 | Lab model card | |
| 5 | gpt-oss-120b | 42.9% | high, Qwen3-Embed-8B | Aug 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 6 | LFM3-1.7B | 37% | Oct 2026 | Lab model card | |
| 7 | Claude Sonnet 4 | 36.8% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | May 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 8 | Claude Opus 4 | 36.1% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | May 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 9 | GPT-4.1 | 35.4% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Apr 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 10 | LFM2.5-2.6B | 26.9% | Aug 2026 | Lab model card | |
| 11 | | 10.4% | Qwen3-Embed-8B | Apr 2025 | Official leaderboard |
Labs report scores for 4 models in their cards. Switch the scores above to rank them together.
2 models have held number one on the official leaderboard since its release in August 2025 2 models have held number one with claims included since its release in August 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.
Sources: Official BrowseComp-Plus leaderboard and labs’ model cards
Scores over time
All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.
Sources: Official BrowseComp-Plus leaderboard and labs’ model cards
2 labs put it in a launch post in the last six months
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.
| Date | Launch post | Score | As the post writes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 27, 2026 | LFM3-1.7B | 37 | BrowseComp-Plus (OpenClaw subset) |
| Oct 19, 2026 | Mercury 3 | 55.2 | BrowseComp+ |
| Aug 4, 2026 | LFM2.5-2.6B | 26.9 | BrowseComp+ (OpenClaw) |
One system card reports it
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.
| Date | Document | Score | As the document writes it | Section |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 24, 2025 | Claude Opus 4.5 system card | 67.6 | BrowseComp-Plus agentic search, with tool result clearing, Qwen3-Embedding-8B search, no fetch tool, single run (Table 2.6.A; 72.89% with tool result clearing + memory; Figure 2.6.2.A with fetch tool 70.48% base to 85.30% with subagents) | Capabilities |
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