Benchmark Almanac

xbench-ScienceQA

Claude Opus 4.8 76.4% leads since May 2026 Not in model cards

Models answer postgraduate-level science questions written by experts, in Chinese, as part of the xbench AGI Tracking series.

Not the 2022 ScienceQA from UCLA and Ai2. The repo board reports score and best of 5. o3-high led at 60.8 at launch.

In the authors’ words

We introduce xbench, a dynamic, profession-aligned evaluation suite designed to bridge the gap between AI agent capabilities and real-world productivity. While existing benchmarks often focus on isolated technical skills, they may not accurately reflect the economic value agents deliver in professional settings. To address this, xbench targets commercially significant domains with evaluation tasks defined by industry professionals. Our framework creates metrics that strongly correlate with productivity value, enables prediction of Technology-Market Fit (TMF), and facilitates tracking of product capabilities over time. As our initial implementations, we present two benchmarks: Recruitment and Marketing. For Recruitment, we collect 50 tasks from real-world headhunting business scenarios to evaluate agents' abilities in company mapping, information retrieval, and talent sourcing. For Marketing, we assess agents' ability to match influencers with advertiser needs, evaluating their performance across 50 advertiser requirements using a curated pool of 836 candidate influencers. We present initial evaluation results for leading contemporary agents, establishing a baseline for these professional domains. Our continuously updated evalsets and evaluations are available at https://xbench.org.

Abstract of xbench: Tracking Agents Productivity Scaling with Profession-Aligned Real-World Evaluations (arXiv:2506.13651, CC0)
Made by xbench (HongShan) Released May 2025 Science questions All tasks public Last model added Sep 2026 Scores refreshed 2 Nov 2026
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.
29
Models scored on its own leaderboard

2 models share the top score of 76.4%

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 Claude Opus 4.8 76.4%
  2. 2 Claude Opus 5.5 76.4%
  3. 3 GPT-6 Astra max 74.6%
  4. 4 Claude Fable 5 73.4%
  5. 5 Qwen 3.8 Max 73.4%
  6. 6 Claude Opus 4.7 73%
  7. 7 GPT-5.5 Pro high 73%
  8. 8 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash max 72.6%
  9. 9 Grok 4.5 72.4%
  10. 10 Gemini 3.8 Flash high 72.4%
  11. 11 GPT-5.4 Pro 72.2%
  12. 12 Gemini 3 Pro 71.6%
  13. 13 Kimi K3 71.2%
  14. 14 DeepSeek-V4-Flash 71%
  15. 15 Seed2.1 Pro 71%
  16. 16 GPT-5.6 Sol Pro 71%
  17. 17 GPT-5.4 70.8%
  18. 18 Qwen3.7-Max xhigh 70.8%
  19. 19 Grok 4.6 70.4%
  20. 20 Gemini 3.7 Flash 70.2%
  21. 21 Tencent Hy4 preview 69.8%
  22. 22 DeepSeek-V4-Pro max 69.4%
  23. 23 Seed2.0 Pro high 69.2%
  24. 24 Tencent Hy3 66.6%
  25. 25 Kimi K2.6 65.8%
  26. 26 GLM-5.3 65.8%
  27. 27 Gemini 3.6 Flash 65.6%
  28. 28 Grok 4 65%
  29. 29 GLM-5.2 64.6%
#ModelScoreSettingDateSource
1 Claude Opus 4.8 76.4% May 2026 Official leaderboard
2 Claude Opus 5.5 76.4% Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
3 GPT-6 Astra 74.6% max Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
4 Claude Fable 5 73.4% Jun 2026 Official leaderboard
5 Qwen 3.8 Max 73.4% Aug 2026 Official leaderboard
6 Claude Opus 4.7 73% Apr 2026 Official leaderboard
7 GPT-5.5 Pro 73% high Apr 2026 Official leaderboard
8 DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 72.6% max Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
9 Grok 4.5 72.4% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
10 Gemini 3.8 Flash 72.4% high Sep 2026 Official leaderboard
11 GPT-5.4 Pro 72.2% Mar 2026 Official leaderboard
12 Gemini 3 Pro 71.6% Nov 2025 Official leaderboard
13 Kimi K3 71.2% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
14 DeepSeek-V4-Flash 71% Apr 2026 Official leaderboard
15 Seed2.1 Pro 71% Jun 2026 Official leaderboard
16 GPT-5.6 Sol Pro 71% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
17 GPT-5.4 70.8% Mar 2026 Official leaderboard
18 Qwen3.7-Max 70.8% xhigh May 2026 Official leaderboard
19 Grok 4.6 70.4% Aug 2026 Official leaderboard
20 Gemini 3.7 Flash 70.2% Aug 2026 Official leaderboard
21 Tencent Hy4 preview 69.8% Aug 2026 Official leaderboard
22 DeepSeek-V4-Pro 69.4% max Apr 2026 Official leaderboard
23 Seed2.0 Pro 69.2% high Feb 2026 Official leaderboard
24 Tencent Hy3 66.6% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
25 Kimi K2.6 65.8% Apr 2026 Official leaderboard
26 GLM-5.3 65.8% Aug 2026 Official leaderboard
27 Gemini 3.6 Flash 65.6% Jul 2026 Official leaderboard
28 Grok 4 65% Jul 2025 Official leaderboard
29 GLM-5.2 64.6% Jun 2026 Official leaderboard

5 models have held number one since its release in May 2025

Lab claims count from the day the card came out, independent runs from the model’s release.

xAI Google DeepMind OpenAI Anthropic
Own leaderboard 5 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 Best so far
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2026 Near the ceiling (85%) Claude Opus 4.8 GPT-5.4 Pro Gemini 3 Pro Grok 4 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 2026 Near the ceiling (85%) Claude Opus 4.8 Grok 4

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.

More in Science and reasoning

All 88 in Science and reasoning
  • GPQA Diamond In use 198 graduate-level 'Google-proof' multiple-choice questions in biology, chemistry and physics. Gemini 4 Argon 96.4%
  • Terminal-Bench-Science In use 70 scientific research-workflow tasks across five science areas, run in Harbor containers. Hidden tests give the resolution rate. GPT-6 Astra 68.1%
  • FrontierScience In use Models solve physics, chemistry, and biology problems in an Olympiad track graded by short answer and a Research track graded by 10-point rubrics. Intern-S2-397B 87%
  • BioMysteryBench In use Bioinformatics problems on anonymized real datasets that require real analysis with tools. Rubric-graded, with human-solvable and human-difficult splits. Claude Opus 5 90.1%
  • HiPhO In use Models solve theory problems from 2024 and 2025 physics olympiad exams, some with diagrams. Official marking schemes grade answers and steps, mapped to medal levels. Gemini 3 Pro 78.3%
  • LABBench2 In use 11 biology research sub-tasks (literature, figures, tables, patents, trials and more) with tool access. Macro-averaged accuracy. GPT-5.2 60.9%