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Main Authors: Gao, Yiwen, Zhao, Ruochen, Deng, Yang, Zhang, Wenxuan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.10504
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author Gao, Yiwen
Zhao, Ruochen
Deng, Yang
Zhang, Wenxuan
author_facet Gao, Yiwen
Zhao, Ruochen
Deng, Yang
Zhang, Wenxuan
contents As Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly operate as Deep Research (DR) Agents capable of autonomous investigation and information synthesis, reliable evaluation of their task performance has become a critical bottleneck. Current benchmarks predominantly rely on static datasets, which suffer from several limitations: limited task generality, temporal misalignment, and data contamination. To address these, we introduce DR-Arena, a fully automated evaluation framework that pushes DR agents to their capability limits through dynamic investigation. DR-Arena constructs real-time Information Trees from fresh web trends to ensure the evaluation rubric is synchronized with the live world state, and employs an automated Examiner to generate structured tasks testing two orthogonal capabilities: Deep reasoning and Wide coverage. DR-Arena further adopts Adaptive Evolvement Loop, a state-machine controller that dynamically escalates task complexity based on real-time performance, demanding deeper deduction or wider aggregation until a decisive capability boundary emerges. Experiments with six advanced DR agents demonstrate that DR-Arena achieves a Spearman correlation of 0.94 with the LMSYS Search Arena leaderboard. This represents the state-of-the-art alignment with human preferences without any manual efforts, validating DR-Arena as a reliable alternative for costly human adjudication.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_10504
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DR-Arena: an Automated Evaluation Framework for Deep Research Agents
Gao, Yiwen
Zhao, Ruochen
Deng, Yang
Zhang, Wenxuan
Computation and Language
As Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly operate as Deep Research (DR) Agents capable of autonomous investigation and information synthesis, reliable evaluation of their task performance has become a critical bottleneck. Current benchmarks predominantly rely on static datasets, which suffer from several limitations: limited task generality, temporal misalignment, and data contamination. To address these, we introduce DR-Arena, a fully automated evaluation framework that pushes DR agents to their capability limits through dynamic investigation. DR-Arena constructs real-time Information Trees from fresh web trends to ensure the evaluation rubric is synchronized with the live world state, and employs an automated Examiner to generate structured tasks testing two orthogonal capabilities: Deep reasoning and Wide coverage. DR-Arena further adopts Adaptive Evolvement Loop, a state-machine controller that dynamically escalates task complexity based on real-time performance, demanding deeper deduction or wider aggregation until a decisive capability boundary emerges. Experiments with six advanced DR agents demonstrate that DR-Arena achieves a Spearman correlation of 0.94 with the LMSYS Search Arena leaderboard. This represents the state-of-the-art alignment with human preferences without any manual efforts, validating DR-Arena as a reliable alternative for costly human adjudication.
title DR-Arena: an Automated Evaluation Framework for Deep Research Agents
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.10504