Verifying the Verifiers (Project APE CRED benchmark)
Verifier LLMs must find planted errors (prose-table, paper-code, execution, data) in AI-generated economics papers. Credit needs a verbatim quote of the edit.
Mutation testing on 100 reproducible host papers with deterministic scoring and no LLM judge. Best single config 99% recall (Codex 5.6 Sol high). Instances and answer key withheld against contamination. Up to 28% of per-error outcomes flip between identical runs. Repo holds the APE papers, not the CRED code.
- Level
- Expert Specialists with years of training, often over hours of work
- Scored
- Checked automatically A program checks the result against an answer key, unit tests or the expected final state.
- Answers
- Short answer A number, word or short string matched to a key.
GPT-6 Astra leads with 99.5%
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. Every run is in the next chart. Names in gray aren't in our model list: fine-tunes, agent systems, products and older models. They don't count toward leaders.
- 99.5 GPT-6 Astra
- 99.0 GPT-5.6 Sol
- 97.5 GPT-5.6 Luna
- 97.0 GPT-5.6 Terra
- 96.5 GPT-5.5
- 96.5 Claude Fable 5
- 91.0 openai/gpt-5.6-luna-pro
- 90.0 GLM-5.3-Flash
- 89.5 GLM-5.2
- 87.5 GPT-6 Luna
- 85.0 Claude Opus 4.8
- 83.5 Claude Sonnet 4.6
- 83.5
DeepSeek-V4-Pro
- 80.5
DeepSeek-V4-Flash
- 79.5
Gemini 3.8 Flash
- 77.5 Claude Sonnet 5
- 74.0
Gemini 3.7 Flash
- 68.5
Gemini 3.5 Flash
- 50.5
Tencent Hy3 preview
- 47.0
Gemini 3 Flash
- 32.0
Mistral Large 3
- 19.0
Mistral Small 3.2
- 14.0 GPT-4.1
- 11.5 GPT-4o
- 1 GPT-6 Astra low 99.5%
- 2 GPT-5.6 Sol high 99%
- 3 GPT-5.6 Luna xhigh 97.5%
- 4 GPT-5.6 Terra high 97%
- 5 GPT-5.5 high 96.5%
- 6 Claude Fable 5 high 96.5%
- 7 openai/gpt-5.6-luna-pro 91%
- 8 GLM-5.3-Flash xhigh 90%
- 9 GLM-5.2 high 89.5%
- 10 GPT-6 Luna high 87.5%
- 11 Claude Opus 4.8 medium 85%
- 12 Claude Sonnet 4.6 high 83.5%
- 13
DeepSeek-V4-Pro xhigh 83.5%
- 14
DeepSeek-V4-Flash xhigh 80.5%
- 15
Gemini 3.8 Flash high 79.5%
- 16 Claude Sonnet 5 high 77.5%
- 17
Gemini 3.7 Flash high 74%
- 18
Gemini 3.5 Flash high 68.5%
- 19
Tencent Hy3 preview 50.5%
- 20
Gemini 3 Flash low 47%
- 21
Mistral Large 3 32%
- 22
Mistral Small 3.2 19%
- 23 GPT-4.1 14%
- 24 GPT-4o Mar 2025 11.5%
| # | Entry | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT-6 Astra | 99.5% | low, Codex CLI | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 2 | GPT-5.6 Sol | 99% | high, Codex CLI | Jul 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 3 | GPT-5.6 Luna | 97.5% | xhigh | Jul 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 4 | GPT-5.6 Terra | 97% | high, Codex CLI | Jul 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 5 | GPT-5.5 | 96.5% | high, Codex CLI | Apr 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 6 | Claude Fable 5 | 96.5% | high, Claude Code | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 7 | openai/gpt-5.6-luna-pro | 91% | Aug 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 8 | GLM-5.3-Flash | 90% | xhigh | Aug 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 9 | GLM-5.2 | 89.5% | high | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 10 | GPT-6 Luna | 87.5% | high, Codex CLI | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 11 | Claude Opus 4.8 | 85% | medium, Claude Code | May 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 12 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 83.5% | high, Claude Code | Feb 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 13 | | 83.5% | xhigh | Apr 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 14 | | 80.5% | xhigh | Apr 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 15 | | 79.5% | high | Sep 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 16 | Claude Sonnet 5 | 77.5% | high, Claude Code | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 17 | | 74% | high | Aug 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 18 | | 68.5% | high | May 2026 | Official leaderboard |
| 19 | | 50.5% | Apr 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 20 | | 47% | low | Dec 2025 | Official leaderboard |
| 21 | | 32% | Dec 2025 | Official leaderboard | |
| 22 | | 19% | Jun 2025 | Official leaderboard | |
| 23 | GPT-4.1 | 14% | Apr 2025 | Official leaderboard | |
| 24 | GPT-4o Mar 2025 | 11.5% | Mar 2025 | Official leaderboard |
The best score, 99.5%, costs $0.78 a task
Runs on the cost frontier score higher than any run that's cheaper. GPT-5.6 Luna at xhigh comes within 2 points of the best for $0.05 a task, 16 times cheaper. The costs are the leaderboard's own estimates, so compare them only within this benchmark.
| Model | Effort | Harness | Score | Cost per task | Output tokens |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6 Astra | low | Codex CLI | 99.5% | $0.78 | |
| GPT-6 Astra | medium | Codex CLI | 99.5% | $0.82 | |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | high | Codex CLI | 99% | $0.86 | |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | medium | Codex CLI | 98.5% | $0.62 | |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | xhigh | 97.5% | $0.05 | ||
| GPT-5.6 Terra | high | Codex CLI | 97% | $0.37 | |
| GPT-5.5 | high | Codex CLI | 96.5% | $0.82 | |
| Claude Fable 5 | high | Claude Code | 96.5% | $2.04 | |
| Claude Fable 5 | medium | Claude Code | 96% | $1.66 | |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | high | Codex CLI | 95% | $0.23 | |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | low | Codex CLI | 94.5% | $0.44 | |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | high | 94% | $0.02 | ||
| GPT-5.5 | medium | Codex CLI | 93.5% | $0.58 | |
| Claude Fable 5 | low | Claude Code | 92.5% | $1.16 | |
| GLM-5.3-Flash | xhigh | 90% | $0.003 | ||
| GLM-5.2 | high | 89.5% | $0.12 | ||
| GPT-5.5 | low | Codex CLI | 88.5% | $0.44 | |
| GLM-5.3-Flash | high | 88.5% | $0.003 | ||
| GPT-6 Luna | high | Codex CLI | 87.5% | $0.009 | |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | low | 86.5% | $0.008 | ||
| GPT-5.6 Luna | medium | 86.5% | $0.01 | ||
| Claude Opus 4.8 | medium | Claude Code | 85% | $0.78 | |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | high | Claude Code | 85% | $0.93 | |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | low | Claude Code | 84% | $0.92 | |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | high | Claude Code | 83.5% | $0.72 | |
| | xhigh | 83.5% | $0.03 | ||
| | xhigh | 80.5% | $0.007 | ||
| | high | 79.5% | $0.14 | ||
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | medium | Claude Code | 78% | $0.50 | |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | high | Claude Code | 77.5% | $0.49 | |
| GLM-5.3-Flash | low | 75% | $0.002 | ||
| | high | 74% | $0.03 | ||
| GPT-6 Luna | low | Codex CLI | 73% | $0.006 | |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | low | Claude Code | 72% | $0.27 | |
| | high | 68.5% | $0.21 | ||
| | low | 64.5% | $0.01 | ||
| | low | 64.5% | $0.03 | ||
| | low | 51.5% | $0.07 | ||
| | 50.5% | $0.003 | |||
| | low | 47% | $0.02 | ||
| | 32% | $0.02 | |||
| | 19% | $0.002 | |||
| GPT-4.1 | 14% | $0.05 | |||
| GPT-4o Mar 2025 | 11.5% | $0.07 |
3 models have held number one since its release in Jul 2026
Lab claims count from the day the card came out, independent runs from the model’s release.
The best score passed 85% in Apr 2026
All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.
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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