How It Works
Learn how your votes power transparent AI progress
Ask a Question
Type in your prompt or question to the open arena. The data is collected to support fair, public evaluations.
Compare Answers
You'll be served 2 anonymous models. Dig into the responses and decide which answer best fits your needs.
Vote for the Best
Choose your preferred response. Your vote helps shape the public AI leaderboards.
Discover and Repeat
After voting, the model identities are revealed. Keep exploring to help improve AI in this open, community-powered space.
FAQ
Battle Mode
What happens when I vote in a model battle?
When you vote, you're directly influencing the public leaderboard rankings. Your choice updates each model's score using the Elo rating system, a method originally developed for ranking players in competitive games like chess. We use Elo because it's well-suited for pairwise comparisons, allowing us to update model scores incrementally based on real user preferences.
Are the models truly anonymous? When are their names revealed?
Yes, the models remain anonymous during voting to ensure fairness and eliminate potential bias. The model names are revealed immediately after you cast your vote, so you can discover which model you preferred. Note: Only votes made while the models are anonymous count toward official rankings; any votes cast after model identities are revealed will not impact leaderboard standings.
Can I submit multiple prompts or votes?
Absolutely! You're welcome to submit as many prompts and votes as you'd like. Every vote helps improve the accuracy and diversity of the leaderboard, making it more reflective of real-world model performance.
A few things to keep in mind:
When switching between different model matchups, your previous conversation context may not carry over.
After each vote, the models are anonymously resampled, even if you stay in the same chat.
Since we're still in Beta, the system may be a bit buggy—we're actively testing vote quality. All votes from the Beta are being stored, and as signal quality improves, they'll be integrated into the leaderboard data set.
Transparency & Privacy
Is my prompt data publicly visible?
Your conversations may be shared to support our community, improve our service, and advance the development of reliable AI. This includes posting conversations publicly online. Any data that we share is always anonymous and never linked to you. We never share any personal information, just the conversation and votes.
How is my feedback used to rank AI models?
Your votes directly shape the model rankings through the Elo rating system, a method originally developed for ranking players in competitive games like chess. We use Elo because it's well-suited for pairwise comparisons, allowing us to update model scores incrementally based on real user preferences. The more you vote, the more reliable and representative the leaderboard becomes. This makes LMArena leaderboards grounded in community judgment, not static benchmarks.
What steps do you take to protect my privacy?
We take user privacy seriously. All prompts and votes are anonymous and not connected to personally identifiable information. Additionally, individual conversations are never publicly shared beyond prompt text and model responses, ensuring your identity remains protected.
Why do you collect user prompts openly?
We openly collect prompts to maintain transparency, reproducibility, and trustworthiness of the evaluations. Open data helps the community independently verify model performance and ensures our benchmarks reflect authentic, real-world scenarios.
Supporting & Contributing
Can I access the evaluation data for research?
Yes! We share a portion of our anonymized voting data with the research community to support open science and reproducibility. While we don't release full conversation logs for privacy and methodological reasons, the available data includes prompt text, voting outcomes, and model pairings. You can explore our datasets with Arena Explorer or directly on HuggingFace and reach out if you're interested in collaborations or deeper access.
Who else participates in these evaluations?
LMArena is powered by a diverse global community, from AI enthusiasts and students to researchers, developers, and everyday users. Everyone is welcome to this open space, because we believe the best AI evaluations reflect real-world diversity and lived experience, not just expert opinion.
How does LMArena sustain itself financially?
While LMArena began as a research initiative, we have graduated into a platform. We are currently supported through volunteers, grants and sponsors across UC Berkeley SkyLab, a16z, Sequoia, Fireworks AI, Together AI, RunPod, Anyscale, Replicate, Fal AI, Hyperbolic, Kaggle, MBZUAI, and HuggingFace. Learn more on our About Us page.