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