Benchgen

ProgramBench — Results

RankModelScore
1kimi-k377.8
2kimi-k3-1-pro31.5
3deepseek-v4-1-flash-101729.1
4deepseek-v4-1-flash20.3
5claude-opus-5-518.5
6claude-opus-5-518.5
7hy4-preview17.5
8claude-fable-5-17
9claude-fable-5-17
10claude-sonnet-5-56.5
11claude-sonnet-5-56.5
12gpt-6-astra5.5
13gpt-6-astra5.5
14gpt-6-1-sol3
15gpt-6-1-sol3
P

ProgramBench

1 phaseActive

Academic coding-agent benchmark by Yang et al. (Meta Superintelligence Labs, Stanford, Harvard): rebuild 200 command-line programs from a binary and its documentation, graded by hidden behavioral tests. Metric: % fully resolved.

Overview

ProgramBench

Category Metric Saturation Created

Website arXiv GitHub

Quick answer: ProgramBench asks whether a coding agent can rebuild a command-line program from scratch, given only its compiled binary and its documentation. It is an academic benchmark by Yang et al. (Meta Superintelligence Labs, Stanford, Harvard); Vals AI runs it independently and lists it as academic. The best fully resolved rate on Vals AI is 18.5% (Claude Opus 5.5, October 2026).

At a Glance

What it tests: Writing a whole program that behaves like an existing one, from an execute-only binary and its docs. Decompilers, disassemblers and internet lookups are not allowed.

Why it matters: It is a long-horizon software task with no reference code to copy: the agent has to infer the behavior, design the program and get the edge cases right.

Known limitations: The headline metric is strict (a task counts only if every hidden test passes), so scores are low and close together. Model developers often report a different metric or their own harness, so self-reported numbers are usually not comparable with the fully resolved rate.

What ProgramBench Measures

Each of the 200 tasks gives the agent a compiled command-line program and its documentation. The agent writes an implementation from scratch, which is then run against hidden behavioral tests (over 248,000 across the benchmark) that compare it with the original program.

Benchmark Specifications

FieldValue
Task categoryCoding (agentic)
Tasks200 public tasks, over 248,000 hidden behavioral tests
Metric% fully resolved (all hidden tests pass)
Secondary metricsAlmost resolved (at least 95% of tests pass), raw pass rate
SaturationLow
Created byYang et al. (Meta Superintelligence Labs, Stanford University, Harvard University)
PaperProgramBench: Can Language Models Rebuild Programs From Scratch?
Independent leaderboardVals AI (listed as academic)

How ProgramBench Is Scored

A task is fully resolved only when the submitted program passes all of its hidden behavioral tests. The headline score is the share of the 200 tasks that are fully resolved. Two secondary numbers are reported: almost resolved (at least 95% of the tests pass) and the raw pass rate (the average share of tests passed per task). The authors warn that the average pass rate on its own is misleading, because a program can pass most tests and still not work.

State-of-the-Art Results

Independent runs by Vals AI, fully resolved, updated 2026-10-12:

RankModelFully resolvedSourceDate
1Claude Opus 5.518.5%Vals AI2026-10
2Claude Fable 5.17.0%Vals AI2026-10
3Claude Sonnet 5.56.5%Vals AI2026-10
4GPT-6 Astra5.5%Vals AI2026-10
5GPT-6.1 Sol3.0%Vals AI2026-10

Reported by model developers (different harness or metric, not comparable with the table above):

ModelScoreNoteSource
DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash20.3%Developer-reportedModel card
Hy4 Preview17.5%Developer-reportedModel card
Kimi K377.8%Run with the Kimi Code harness; metric not stated, not the fully resolved rateKimi K3 report

ProgramBench on Benchgen

No Benchgen runs yet. The scores above are mirrored from Vals AI and model developers, not re-run by Benchgen.

ProgramBench vs Other Benchmarks

BenchmarkWhat it testsSaturation
ProgramBenchRebuilding a program from its binary and docsLow
BigCodeBenchPractical code generationMedium
LiveCodeBenchContamination-resistant competitive codingMedium
DeepSWESoftware engineering agent tasksLow

Run ProgramBench on Your Model

The 200 tasks and the evaluation setup are public on GitHub, so ProgramBench can be reproduced outside the authors' setup. A run needs a sandbox where the agent can execute the binary and where the program it builds is checked against the hidden tests.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ProgramBench? ProgramBench is an academic benchmark that asks a coding agent to rebuild a command-line program from scratch, using only the compiled binary and its documentation. It has 200 tasks graded by hidden behavioral tests.
What does a good score look like on ProgramBench? On the strict fully resolved metric, 18.5% (Claude Opus 5.5 on Vals AI, October 2026) is the best independent result, and most frontier models resolve under 10% of the tasks. Higher numbers in model announcements usually use a different metric, such as the average test pass rate.
Who created ProgramBench? ProgramBench was created by John Yang, Kilian Lieret, Jeffrey Ma, Parth Thakkar, Dmitrii Pedchenko, Sten Sootla, Emily McMilin, Pengcheng Yin, Rui Hou, Gabriel Synnaeve, Diyi Yang and Ofir Press (Meta Superintelligence Labs, Stanford University, Harvard University). Vals AI did not create it: it runs the benchmark independently and lists it as academic.