MM-IFEval
Multimodal models follow image-grounded instructions with exact output constraints. Checks mix rule-based verification and a judge model.
Released with the MM-IFEngine training pipeline. 35 upvotes on Hugging Face papers.
- Made by
- MM-IFEngine team (Ding et al.)
- Released
- April 2025
- Kind
- Following precise instructions
- Level
- Everyday
- Scored
- Checked automatically
- Answers
- Open-ended
- Tasks
- All public
- Strongest model tested
- GPT-4o Aug 2024 #166 on the capability index
- Last in a launch post
- August 2026, dropped before it saturated
- Last model added
- August 2026
- Scores refreshed
- November 12th, 2026
In the authors’ words
The Instruction Following (IF) ability measures how well Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) understand exactly what users are telling them and whether they are doing it right. Existing multimodal instruction following training data is scarce, the benchmarks are simple with atomic instructions, and the evaluation strategies are imprecise for tasks demanding exact output constraints. To address this, we present MM-IFEngine, an effective pipeline to generate high-quality image-instruction pairs. Our MM-IFEngine pipeline yields large-scale, diverse, and high-quality training data MM-IFInstruct-23k, which is suitable for Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and extended as MM-IFDPO-23k for Direct Preference Optimization (DPO). We further introduce MM-IFEval, a challenging and diverse multi-modal instruction-following benchmark that includes (1) both compose-level constraints for output responses and perception-level constraints tied to the input images, and (2) a comprehensive evaluation pipeline incorporating both rule-based assessment and judge model. We conduct SFT and DPO experiments and demonstrate that fine-tuning MLLMs on MM-IFInstruct-23k and MM-IFDPO-23k achieves notable gains on various IF benchmarks, such as MM-IFEval (+10.2%), MIA (+7.6%), and IFEval (+12.3%). We have fully open-sourced the datasets (both SFT and DPO), evaluation code and training scripts at https://github.com/SYuan03/MM-IFEngine.
GPT-4o leads with 64.6% among models released by December 2024
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-4o leads with 64.6%, 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 December 2024, 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
- 64.6 GPT-4o
- 62.8 GPT-4o-mini (snapshot unspecified)
- 61.7 Claude-3.5-Sonnet (snapshot unspecified)
- 52.2 Qwen2-VL-7B-Instruct + MM-IFDPO-23k
- 50.8 Qwen2-VL-72B-Instruct
- 49.3 LLaVA-NeXT-Llama3-8B + MM-IFDPO-23k
- 48.1
InternVL2.5-26B
- 46.2
InternVL2.5-8B
- 45.0
InternVL2-40B
- 42.0 Qwen2-VL-7B-Instruct
- 41.9
InternVL2-8B
- 39.7 LLaVA-NeXT-Llama3-8B
- 37.4 MiniCPM-V-2_6
- 34.0
LLaVA-OneVision 7B
- 31.6 LLaVA-NeXT-7B
- 1 GPT-4o Aug 2024 64.6%
- 2 GPT-4o-mini (snapshot unspecified) 62.8%
- 3 Claude-3.5-Sonnet (snapshot unspecified) 61.7%
- 4 Qwen2-VL-7B-Instruct + MM-IFDPO-23k 52.2%
- 5 Qwen2-VL-72B-Instruct 50.8%
- 6 LLaVA-NeXT-Llama3-8B + MM-IFDPO-23k 49.3%
- 7
InternVL2.5-26B 48.1%
- 8
InternVL2.5-8B 46.2%
- 9
InternVL2-40B 45%
- 10 Qwen2-VL-7B-Instruct 42%
- 11
InternVL2-8B 41.9%
- 12 LLaVA-NeXT-Llama3-8B 39.7%
- 13 MiniCPM-V-2_6 37.4%
- 14
LLaVA-OneVision 7B 34%
- 15 LLaVA-NeXT-7B 31.6%
Source: Official MM-IFEval leaderboard
- 1 GPT-4o Aug 2024 64.6%
- 2
STEP3-VL-10B 61.9%
- 3 LFM2.5-VL-3B 60.6%
- 4 Qwen2-VL-72B-Instruct 50.8%
- 5
InternVL2.5-26B 48.1%
- 6 LFM2-VL-1.6B 46.4%
- 7
InternVL2.5-8B 46.2%
- 8
InternVL2-40B 45%
- 9 Qwen2-VL-7B-Instruct 42%
- 10
InternVL2-8B 41.9%
- 11 MiniCPM-V-2_6 37.4%
- 12
LLaVA-OneVision 7B 34%
Sources: Official MM-IFEval leaderboard and labs’ model cards
| # | Entry | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-4o Aug 2024 | 64.6% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 2 | GPT-4o-mini (snapshot unspecified) | 62.8% | Official leaderboard | ||
| 3 | Claude-3.5-Sonnet (snapshot unspecified) | 61.7% | Official leaderboard | ||
| 4 | Qwen2-VL-7B-Instruct + MM-IFDPO-23k | 52.2% | Official leaderboard | ||
| 5 | Qwen2-VL-72B-Instruct | 50.8% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 6 | LLaVA-NeXT-Llama3-8B + MM-IFDPO-23k | 49.3% | Official leaderboard | ||
| 7 | | 48.1% | Dec 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 8 | | 46.2% | Dec 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 9 | | 45% | Jul 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 10 | Qwen2-VL-7B-Instruct | 42% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 11 | | 41.9% | Jul 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 12 | LLaVA-NeXT-Llama3-8B | 39.7% | Official leaderboard | ||
| 13 | MiniCPM-V-2_6 | 37.4% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 14 | | 34% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 15 | LLaVA-NeXT-7B | 31.6% | Official leaderboard |
| # | Model | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-4o Aug 2024 | 64.6% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 2 | | 61.9% | Jan 2026 | Lab model card | |
| 3 | LFM2.5-VL-3B | 60.6% | Aug 2026 | Lab model card | |
| 4 | Qwen2-VL-72B-Instruct | 50.8% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 5 | | 48.1% | Dec 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 6 | LFM2-VL-1.6B | 46.4% | Nov 2025 | Lab model card | |
| 7 | | 46.2% | Dec 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 8 | | 45% | Jul 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 9 | Qwen2-VL-7B-Instruct | 42% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 10 | | 41.9% | Jul 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 11 | MiniCPM-V-2_6 | 37.4% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard | |
| 12 | | 34% | Aug 2024 | Official leaderboard |
Labs report scores for 3 models in their cards. Switch the scores above to rank them together.
Number one over time Number one over time
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 MM-IFEval 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 MM-IFEval 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.
| Date | Launch post | Score | As the post writes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 12, 2026 | LFM2.5-VL-3B | 60.6 | MM-IFEval |
| Aug 12, 2025 | LFM2-VL-1.6B | 37.7 | MM-IFEval |
2 system cards report it, from 2 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.
| Date | Document | Score | As the document writes it | Section |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 14, 2026 | | 61.9 | MM-IFEval, SeRe (Table 1) | Capabilities |
| Nov 28, 2025 | LFM2-VL-1.6B technical report | 46.4 | MM-IFEval, LFM2-VL-1.6B (Table 8) | Capabilities |
More 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%