← Back to Guides

What Is SWE-Bench? The AI Coding Benchmark Explained

May 2026 · 6 min read

SWE-bench is the most widely cited benchmark for evaluating AI coding capability. It tests whether an AI can solve real GitHub issues — not just generate code snippets, but actually fix real-world bugs and implement features.

How SWE-bench Works

Each task in SWE-bench presents the AI with a GitHub repository, a description of a bug or feature request, and requires the AI to produce a pull request that passes the repository's existing tests. This tests end-to-end coding capability: understanding the codebase, locating the relevant code, making the correct change, and verifying nothing breaks.

SWE-bench Verified vs Pro

SWE-bench Verified contains 500 human-validated instances. This is the standard benchmark. SWE-bench Pro contains harder instances that require deeper reasoning. Claude Opus 4.7 scores 64.3% on Pro vs 87.6% on Verified — the gap shows that hard problems still challenge even the best models.

Top Scores (May 2026)

ModelSWE-bench VerifiedSWE-bench Pro
Opus Mythos93.9%
Opus 4.787.6%64.3%
GPT-5.582.6%
DeepSeek V4 Pro80.6%55.4%

Note: SWE-bench Pro scores are limited to models that have been evaluated. Verified scores are available for all frontier models.

Limitations

SWE-bench measures one thing: the ability to fix GitHub issues. It doesn't measure: code generation speed, IDE integration quality, multi-file refactoring ability, UI scaffolding, or developer experience. This is why AgentRanks combines SWE-bench scores with architecture analysis for a complete picture.

← All Guides