Benchmark Almanac

K-Sort Arena

GPT-Image-1 31 Not in model cards

Users rank outputs from K image or video generation models at once instead of a pair. Bayesian updates turn the rankings into ratings.

Published at CVPR 2025. It reports 16.3 times faster convergence than Elo. It covers text-to-image and text-to-video.

In the authors’ words

The rapid advancement of visual generative models necessitates efficient and reliable evaluation methods. Arena platform, which gathers user votes on model comparisons, can rank models with human preferences. However, traditional Arena methods, while established, require an excessive number of comparisons for ranking to converge and are vulnerable to preference noise in voting, suggesting the need for better approaches tailored to contemporary evaluation challenges. In this paper, we introduce K-Sort Arena, an efficient and reliable platform based on a key insight: images and videos possess higher perceptual intuitiveness than texts, enabling rapid evaluation of multiple samples simultaneously. Consequently, K-Sort Arena employs K-wise comparisons, allowing K models to engage in free-for-all competitions, which yield much richer information than pairwise comparisons. To enhance the robustness of the system, we leverage probabilistic modeling and Bayesian updating techniques. We propose an exploration-exploitation-based matchmaking strategy to facilitate more informative comparisons. In our experiments, K-Sort Arena exhibits 16.3x faster convergence compared to the widely used ELO algorithm. To further validate the superiority and obtain a comprehensive leaderboard, we collect human feedback via crowdsourced evaluations of numerous cutting-edge text-to-image and text-to-video models. Thanks to its high efficiency, K-Sort Arena can continuously incorporate emerging models and update the leaderboard with minimal votes. Our project has undergone several months of internal testing and is now available at https://huggingface.co/spaces/ksort/K-Sort-Arena

Abstract of K-Sort Arena: Efficient and Reliable Benchmarking for Generative Models via K-wise Human Preferences (arXiv:2408.14468, CC0)
Made by Li et al. (UC Berkeley and collaborators) Released Aug 2024 Image generation and editing All tasks public Scores refreshed 2 Nov 2026
Level
Everyday Most adults, without training
Scored
Ranked by votes People pick the better of two answers, as in an arena, and the votes are turned into ratings.
Answers
Open-ended Free-form text, documents, designs or media judged as a whole.
36
Entries on its own leaderboard, 5 models we track

GPT-Image-1 leads with 31

Best score per entry from the benchmark's own leaderboard, read on 2 Nov 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.

Bars start at 15.

  1. 1 GPT-Image-1 31
  2. 2 FLUX1.1 [pro] 30
  3. 3 Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large 29
  4. 4 FLUX.1-pro 29
  5. 5 FLUX.1 [dev] 29
  6. 6 Aurora 29
  7. 7 Midjourney-v6.0 29
  8. 8 DALL-E 3 28
  9. 9 SD-v3.5-large-turbo 28
  10. 10 FLUX.1-schnell 28
  11. 11 Midjourney-v5.0 27
  12. 12 SD-v3.0 27
  13. 13 Pixart-Sigma 26
  14. 14 Proteus-v0.2 25
  15. 15 Open-Dalle-v1.1 25
  16. 16 Realvisxl-v3.0 24
  17. 17 Dreamshaper-xl 24
  18. 18 Realvisxl-v2.0 24
  19. 19 Kandinsky-v2.2 24
  20. 20 Deepfloyd-IF 23
  21. 21 Meissonic 23
  22. 22 Kandinsky-v2.0 23
  23. 23 SDXL-turbo 22
  24. 24 Dalle-2 22
  25. 25 Playground-v2.5 22
  26. 26 Openjourney-v4 21
  27. 27 LCM-v1.5 21
  28. 28 SD-turbo 20
  29. 29 SD-v1.5 20
  30. 30 SSD-1b 19
  31. 31 SD-v2.1 19
  32. 32 SDXL 19
  33. 33 Playground-v2.0 19
  34. 34 SDXL-Lightning 18
  35. 35 Stable-cascade 17
  36. 36 SDXL-Deepcache 16
#EntryScoreSettingDateSource
1 GPT-Image-1 31 Official leaderboard
2 FLUX1.1 [pro] 30 Official leaderboard
3 Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large 29 Official leaderboard
4 FLUX.1-pro 29 Official leaderboard
5 FLUX.1 [dev] 29 Official leaderboard
6 Aurora 29 Official leaderboard
7 Midjourney-v6.0 29 Official leaderboard
8 DALL-E 3 28 Official leaderboard
9 SD-v3.5-large-turbo 28 Official leaderboard
10 FLUX.1-schnell 28 Official leaderboard
11 Midjourney-v5.0 27 Official leaderboard
12 SD-v3.0 27 Official leaderboard
13 Pixart-Sigma 26 Official leaderboard
14 Proteus-v0.2 25 Official leaderboard
15 Open-Dalle-v1.1 25 Official leaderboard
16 Realvisxl-v3.0 24 Official leaderboard
17 Dreamshaper-xl 24 Official leaderboard
18 Realvisxl-v2.0 24 Official leaderboard
19 Kandinsky-v2.2 24 Official leaderboard
20 Deepfloyd-IF 23 Official leaderboard
21 Meissonic 23 Official leaderboard
22 Kandinsky-v2.0 23 Official leaderboard
23 SDXL-turbo 22 Official leaderboard
24 Dalle-2 22 Official leaderboard
25 Playground-v2.5 22 Official leaderboard
26 Openjourney-v4 21 Official leaderboard
27 LCM-v1.5 21 Official leaderboard
28 SD-turbo 20 Official leaderboard
29 SD-v1.5 20 Official leaderboard
30 SSD-1b 19 Official leaderboard
31 SD-v2.1 19 Official leaderboard
32 SDXL 19 Official leaderboard
33 Playground-v2.0 19 Official leaderboard
34 SDXL-Lightning 18 Official leaderboard
35 Stable-cascade 17 Official leaderboard
36 SDXL-Deepcache 16 Official leaderboard

Scores over time

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

No dated values yet.

No lab model card reports it yet

We read the headline results of 479 launch posts from 51 labs, and none of them list this benchmark.

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