Benchmark Almanac

SimpleQA Verified

Gemini 3.1 Pro 77.5% leads since Feb 2026 In use

1,000 human-verified, de-duplicated short-answer factual questions measuring parametric knowledge.

Google fixed one dataset error on 2026-03-09 and posted paper v2 on 2026-03-10. Scores stay comparable, so it remains one record.

In the authors’ words

We introduce SimpleQA Verified, a 1,000-prompt benchmark for evaluating Large Language Model (LLM) short-form factuality based on OpenAI's SimpleQA. It addresses critical limitations in OpenAI's benchmark, including noisy and incorrect labels, topical biases, and question redundancy. SimpleQA Verified was created through a rigorous multi-stage filtering process involving de-duplication, topic balancing, and source reconciliation to produce a more reliable and challenging evaluation set, alongside improvements in the autorater prompt. On this new benchmark, Gemini 2.5 Pro achieves a state-of-the-art F1-score of 55.6, outperforming other frontier models, including GPT-5. This work provides the research community with a higher-fidelity tool to track genuine progress in parametric model factuality and to mitigate hallucinations. The benchmark dataset, evaluation code, and leaderboard are available at: https://www.kaggle.com/benchmarks/deepmind/simpleqa-verified.

Abstract of SimpleQA Verified: A Reliable Factuality Benchmark to Measure Parametric Knowledge (arXiv:2509.07968, CC0)
Made by Google DeepMind Released Sep 2025 Short factual questions All tasks public Last in a launch post Sep 2026 Last model added Oct 2026 Scores refreshed 2 Nov 2026
Level
University Undergraduates and entry-level professionals
Scored
Graded by a model A language model scores each response, usually against a rubric.
Answers
Short answer A number, word or short string matched to a key.
56
Models scored on its own leaderboard
12
Launch posts list it, from 6 labs
18
System cards report it, from 9 labs

Gemini 3.1 Pro leads with 77.5%

Best score per model from the benchmark's own leaderboard, read on 2 Nov 2026. Where a model ran with several settings or harnesses, we keep its best.

  1. 1 Gemini 3.1 Pro 77.5%
  2. 2 GPT-6 Astra 75.8%
  3. 3 Gemini 4 Argon 75.6%
  4. 4 Gemini 3.8 Flash 74.6%
  5. 5 GPT-6.1 Sol 73.8%
  6. 6 Gemini 3.7 Flash 73.2%
  7. 7 Gemini 3 Pro 72.1%
  8. 8 Gemini 3.5 Flash 70.4%
  9. 9 GPT-5.6 Sol 69.2%
  10. 10 GPT-6 Sol 64.4%
  11. 11 Claude Opus 5 63.3%
  12. 12 Grok 4.7 59.4%
  13. 13 Grok 4.5 53.8%
  14. 14 Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking Jul 2025 53.7%
  15. 15 Grok 4.6 52.9%
  16. 16 o3 52.3%
  17. 17 Grok 4 51.9%
  18. 18 Claude Opus 4.6 45.2%
  19. 19 Claude Sonnet 5.5 44.8%
  20. 20 Claude Opus 4.8 44.5%
  21. 21 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 42.3%
  22. 22 GPT-5.6 Terra 41.5%
  23. 23 Grok 3 39.3%
  24. 24 GPT-5.6 Luna 39.1%
  25. 25 Claude Opus 4.5 39%
  26. 26 GPT-5.1 34.9%
  27. 27 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 33.1%
  28. 28 Claude Sonnet 5 32.1%
  29. 29 Claude Opus 4.1 31%
  30. 30 Claude Sonnet 4.6 30.9%
  31. 31 GPT-5.4 30.4%
  32. 32 Claude Sonnet 4.5 thinking 29.2%
  33. 33 DeepSeek-R1 May 2025 28.6%
  34. 34 Gemini 2.5 Flash Jun 2025 28.1%
  35. 35 DeepSeek-V3 Mar 2025 27.4%
  36. 36 DeepSeek-V3.1 24.3%
  37. 37 Claude Haiku 5.5 23.9%
  38. 38 Mistral Large 2 Nov 2024 22.3%
  39. 39 o4-mini 21.2%
  40. 40 Grok-2 Dec 2024 20.5%
  41. 41 Grok-3 mini 20.2%
  42. 42 Grok 4 Fast reasoning 19.7%
  43. 43 Mixtral 8x22B 17.8%
  44. 44 gpt-oss-120b 13.1%
  45. 45 GPT-3.5 Turbo Nov 2023 11.2%
  46. 46 Gemma 3 27B 10.7%
  47. 47 Gemma 4 31B IT 10.7%
  48. 48 GPT-4o mini 9.06%
  49. 49 Gemma 4 26B A4B 9.05%
  50. 50 Granite 4.0 H Small 8.57%
  51. 51 Ministral 8B 6.82%
  52. 52 Gemma 3 12B 6.70%
  53. 53 gpt-oss-20b 5.95%
  54. 54 Codestral 5.56%
  55. 55 Ministral 3B 5.43%
  56. 56 Gemma 3 4B 4.60%
#ModelScoreSettingDateSource
1 Gemini 3.1 Pro 77.5% Feb 2026 Official leaderboard
2 GPT-6 Astra 75.8% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
3 Gemini 4 Argon 75.6% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
4 Gemini 3.8 Flash 74.6% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
5 GPT-6.1 Sol 73.8% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
6 Gemini 3.7 Flash 73.2% Aug 2026 Official leaderboard
7 Gemini 3 Pro 72.1% Nov 2025 Official leaderboard
8 Gemini 3.5 Flash 70.4% May 2026 Official leaderboard
9 GPT-5.6 Sol 69.2% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
10 GPT-6 Sol 64.4% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
11 Claude Opus 5 63.3% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
12 Grok 4.7 59.4% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
13 Grok 4.5 53.8% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
14 Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking Jul 2025 53.7% Jul 2025 Official leaderboard
15 Grok 4.6 52.9% Aug 2026 Official leaderboard
16 o3 52.3% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
17 Grok 4 51.9% Jul 2025 Official leaderboard
18 Claude Opus 4.6 45.2% Feb 2026 Official leaderboard
19 Claude Sonnet 5.5 44.8% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
20 Claude Opus 4.8 44.5% May 2026 Official leaderboard
21 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 42.3% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
22 GPT-5.6 Terra 41.5% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
23 Grok 3 39.3% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
24 GPT-5.6 Luna 39.1% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
25 Claude Opus 4.5 39% Nov 2025 Official leaderboard
26 GPT-5.1 34.9% Nov 2025 Official leaderboard
27 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 33.1% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
28 Claude Sonnet 5 32.1% Jun 2026 Official leaderboard
29 Claude Opus 4.1 31% Aug 2025 Official leaderboard
30 Claude Sonnet 4.6 30.9% Feb 2026 Official leaderboard
31 GPT-5.4 30.4% Mar 2026 Official leaderboard
32 Claude Sonnet 4.5 29.2% thinking Sep 2025 Official leaderboard
33 DeepSeek-R1 May 2025 28.6% May 2025 Official leaderboard
34 Gemini 2.5 Flash Jun 2025 28.1% Jun 2025 Official leaderboard
35 DeepSeek-V3 Mar 2025 27.4% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
36 DeepSeek-V3.1 24.3% Aug 2025 Official leaderboard
37 Claude Haiku 5.5 23.9% Oct 2026 Official leaderboard
38 Mistral Large 2 Nov 2024 22.3% Nov 2024 Official leaderboard
39 o4-mini 21.2% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
40 Grok-2 Dec 2024 20.5% Dec 2024 Official leaderboard
41 Grok-3 mini 20.2% Apr 2025 Official leaderboard
42 Grok 4 Fast 19.7% reasoning Sep 2025 Official leaderboard
43 Mixtral 8x22B 17.8% Apr 2024 Official leaderboard
44 gpt-oss-120b 13.1% Aug 2025 Official leaderboard
45 GPT-3.5 Turbo Nov 2023 11.2% Nov 2023 Official leaderboard
46 Gemma 3 27B 10.7% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
47 Gemma 4 31B IT 10.7% Apr 2026 Official leaderboard
48 GPT-4o mini 9.06% Jul 2024 Official leaderboard
49 Gemma 4 26B A4B 9.05% Apr 2026 Official leaderboard
50 Granite 4.0 H Small 8.57% Oct 2025 Official leaderboard
51 Ministral 8B 6.82% Oct 2024 Official leaderboard
52 Gemma 3 12B 6.70% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard
53 gpt-oss-20b 5.95% Aug 2025 Official leaderboard
54 Codestral 5.56% Jan 2025 Official leaderboard
55 Ministral 3B 5.43% Oct 2024 Official leaderboard
56 Gemma 3 4B 4.60% Mar 2025 Official leaderboard

Epoch AI has scores for 84 models. Labs report scores for 22 models in their cards. We plot every source in the charts below.

3 models have held number one since its release in Sep 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, Epoch AI’s runs and what labs claim in their cards.

Qwen Google DeepMind OpenAI
Own leaderboard 3 leaders
Epoch AI runs 5 leaders
Lab claims 3 leaders

Scores over time

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 Run or collected by Epoch AI Reported by the lab in its model card Best so far
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2024 2025 2026 2027 Near the ceiling (85%) Gemini 4 Argon Gemini 3.1 Pro Gemini 3 Pro Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking o1 GPT-4o Mixtral 8x22B 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2024 2025 2026 2027 Near the ceiling (85%) Gemini 4 Argon Gemini 3 Pro

3 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.

Google DeepMind
Deep Cogito
ByteDance Seed
DeepSeek
Microsoft
Thinking Machines
DateLaunch postScoreAs the post writes it
10 Sep 2026 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 42.3 SimpleQA-Verified (EM)
30 Jul 2026 Inkling-Small 20.6 SimpleQA Verified
15 Jul 2026 Inkling 43.9 SimpleQA Verified
2 Jun 2026 MAI-Thinking-1 31 SimpleQA Verified
24 Apr 2026 DeepSeek-V4-Pro 57.9 SimpleQA-Verified (Pass@1)
3 Mar 2026 Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite 43.3 SimpleQA Verified
14 Feb 2026 Seed2.0 Pro 36 SimpleQA Verified
17 Dec 2025 Gemini 3 Flash 68.7 SimpleQA Verified
19 Nov 2025 Cogito v2.1 30.9 SimpleQA Verified (f1)
18 Nov 2025 Gemini 3 Pro 72.1 SimpleQA Verified
25 Sep 2025 Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite 9.6 SimpleQA Verified, Thinking
25 Sep 2025 Gemini 2.5 Flash 27.8 SimpleQA Verified, model card

18 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
13 Oct 2026 Gemini 4 Argon system card 78.8 SimpleQA Verified F1 score 78.8; incorrect rate 6.3% (Figures 5.11, 5.12) Hallucination
10 Sep 2026 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash technical report SimpleQA-Verified (Pass@1) vs reasoning effort, chart only (Figure 12) Hallucination
30 Jul 2026 Inkling-Small model card 20.6 SimpleQA Verified (5. Evaluations table) Hallucination
15 Jul 2026 Inkling model card 43.9 SimpleQA Verified (5. Evaluations table, effort 0.99) Hallucination
13 Jun 2026 Ling-2.6-1T technical report 31.5 SimpleQA-Verified, correct (Table 5) Capabilities
12 Jun 2026 Muse Spark system card 70.8 SimpleQA Verified F1 (Table 2 labels it Hallucination, Table 21). Correct 67.6, correct given attempted 74.3 Hallucination
2 Jun 2026 MAI-Thinking-1 technical report 31 SimpleQA Verified, accuracy (Table 12, rounded) Hallucination
28 May 2026 Claude Opus 4.8 system card 27 SimpleQA Verified net score 0.27 (correct minus incorrect), closed book, printed on chart (6.3.3.1, Figure 6.3.3.1.B) Hallucination
26 Apr 2026 DeepSeek-V4-Pro technical report 57.9 SimpleQA-Verified (Pass@1), DS-V4-Pro Max (Table 6) Hallucination
26 Apr 2026 DeepSeek-V4-Flash technical report 34.1 SimpleQA-Verified (Pass@1), DeepSeek-V4-Flash Max (Table 7) Hallucination
16 Apr 2026 Claude Opus 4.7 system card 28.6 Simple-QA-Verified net score (correct minus incorrect), closed book, printed on chart. Correct 44.9, unsure 38.7, incorrect 16.3 (6.3.3.1, Figures 6.3.3.1.A and B) Hallucination
7 Apr 2026 Claude Mythos Preview system card 70.7 Simple-QA-Verified correct rate, no tools, value printed on chart; unsure 10.3, incorrect 19.0, net score not printed (4.3.3.1, Figure 4.3.3.1.B) Hallucination
3 Mar 2026 Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite model card 43.3 SimpleQA Verified (results table, p.4) Capabilities
14 Feb 2026 Seed2.0 Pro model card 36 SimpleQA Verified (Table 3) Hallucination
5 Feb 2026 Claude Opus 4.6 system card 16.2 Simple-QA-Verified net score (correct minus incorrect), extended thinking, value printed on chart; correct rate 37.7, net 7.8 with thinking plus effort, net 3.6 without thinking (Figure 4.2.B) Hallucination
30 Jan 2026 Kimi K2.5 technical report 36.9 SimpleQA Verified (Table 4) Hallucination
24 Nov 2025 Claude Opus 4.5 system card 44.1 Simple-QA-Verified correct rate, extended thinking (Figure 4.1.B; incorrect 35.4%, uncertain 20.5%) Hallucination
26 Sep 2025 Gemini 2.5 Flash model card 27.8 Factuality SimpleQA Verified (Table, p.4) 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.

OpenAI Perplexity Amazon DeepSeek xAI Qwen Google DeepMind
SimpleQA Verified 13 leaders
SimpleQA Passed 85% in Jan 2025, by Sonar Pro
SimpleQA Verified 4 leaders

More in Factuality

All 70 in Factuality
  • SimpleVQA In use Models answer 2,025 short factual questions about images across 9 tasks and 9 topics. An LLM judge grades answers against fixed references. Qwen3.7-Plus 81.7%
  • HallusionBench In use Models answer 1,129 yes or no questions about 346 images, built in pairs to expose language hallucination and visual illusion. Scored by accuracy. Keye-VL-2.0-30B-A3B 73.5%
  • GaRAGe In use Models write long-form RAG answers to 2,366 questions with human-annotated grounding passages. Scoring checks whether answers use the relevant passages. Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 40.7%
  • Kimi Hallu Bench In use Models answer hard prompts drawn from practical work tasks. Fact-checking agents score the share of claims that are hallucinated. Kimi K3.1 Pro 8.30%
  • RAGTruth In use A word-level annotated corpus of hallucinations in retrieval-augmented generation answers. It is used to train and evaluate hallucination detection and RAG faithfulness. Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 77.9%
  • TruthfulQA Fading Models answer 817 questions across 38 categories that are written to elicit common misconceptions. Scoring checks for truthful answers, often in multiple-choice form. MAI-Thinking-1 88%