Arena tracks four signals for agents from six major AI labs
Arena tracked four Agent Arena signals for the best agents from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Kimi, xAI, and DeepSeek from late June to early October, finding that the largest gap between labs lies in whether users enjoy the experience of using them. On Praise vs Complaint, OpenAI and Anthropic scored +35 points above the leaderboard average, while Moonshot, xAI, and DeepSeek ranged from +5 to +13; on Confirmed Success, the average lab's best model rose from -4 to +14 points within three months, with Anthropic leading at +20 with Claude Opus 5.5 (Max). The Bash Recovery gap narrowed from 34 to 16 points, and Steerability from 19 to 11 points.
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The biggest gap between AI labs isn't whether their agents get the job done. It's whether users actually enjoy working with them.
We tracked the best agent from @AnthropicAI, @OpenAI, @GoogleDeepMind, @Kimi_Moonshot, @spacexai and @deepseek_ai across 4 key Agent Arena signals used between late June and the start of October to see how the industry is shifting.
Three things stood out: 1. Users like some agents far more than others.
On Praise vs Complaint, OpenAI and Anthropic sit at +35 points over the leaderboard average. Moonshot, xAI and DeepSeek land between +5 and +13. No other signal splits the labs this widely.
2. Agents are getting much better at delivery.
On Confirmed Success, the average lab's best model went from -4 to +14 points in three months. Anthropic leads with Claude Opus 5.5 (Max) at +20.
3. Labs are converging on error recovery and steering.
Since June, the spread between the six labs has more than halved on Bash Recovery (34 → 16 points) and nearly halved on Steerability (19 → 11).
In short, the labs are catching up on avoiding failures.
Leaving the user happy is where the top three are pulling away.