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AI-Needle

We mirror this table; we do not rank on it.

Data verified 36 confirmed releases in the last 30 daysFollow model changes

A long-context retrieval benchmark that measures whether a model can recover relevant information embedded deep inside very long contexts.

Benchmark score on AI-Needle — September 18, 2026

We mirror the published score view for AI-Needle. Claude Opus 4.5 leads the public snapshot at 74%, followed by Qwen3.5 397B (68.7%) and Qwen3.6 Plus (68.3%). We do not use these results to rank models overall.

1Proprietary

Claude Opus 4.5

Anthropic

74%
Overall 58.42Context 200K
2Open weights

Qwen3.5 397B

Alibaba

68.7%
Overall 55.09Context 128K
3Proprietary

Qwen3.6 Plus

Alibaba

68.3%
Overall 60.36Context 1M

4 modelsReasoningCurrentDisplay onlyUpdated September 18, 2026

Benchmark score table (4 models)

Score
1
Claude Opus 4.5Anthropic · Closed
74%
2
Qwen3.5 397BAlibaba · Open weight
68.7%
3
Qwen3.6 PlusAlibaba · Closed
68.3%
4
GLM-5Z.AI · Open weight
63.3%

The published AI-Needle snapshot places Claude Opus 4.5 first at 74%. The third row is 5.7 points behind. The broader top-10 range is 10.7 points, so the table still separates the published systems.

4 models have been evaluated on AI-Needle. The benchmark falls in the Reasoning category. This category carries a 17% weight in BenchLM.ai's overall scoring system. AI-Needle is currently displayed for reference but excluded from the scoring formula, so it does not directly affect overall rankings.

About AI-Needle

Year

2026

Tasks

Long-context retrieval

Format

Needle-in-a-haystack recall

Difficulty

Long-context memory

AI-Needle is useful for testing whether very large context windows are actually usable rather than just headline numbers. It rewards precise recall under distractors and long-document clutter.

Qwen3.6 launch benchmarks

Freshness and provenance

Version

AI-Needle 2026

Refresh cadence

Quarterly

Staleness state

Current

Question availability

Public benchmark set

CurrentDisplay only

BenchLM uses freshness metadata to decide whether a benchmark should still be treated as a strong differentiator, a benchmark to watch, or a display-only reference. For the full scoring policy, see the BenchLM methodology page.

Questions

What does AI-Needle measure?

A long-context retrieval benchmark that measures whether a model can recover relevant information embedded deep inside very long contexts.

Which model scores highest on AI-Needle?

Claude Opus 4.5 by Anthropic currently leads with a score of 74% on AI-Needle.

How many models are evaluated on AI-Needle?

4 AI models have been evaluated on AI-Needle on BenchLM.

Compare top models on AI-Needle

Claude Opus 4.5 vs Qwen3.5 397BQwen3.5 397B vs Qwen3.6 PlusQwen3.6 Plus vs GLM-5
Last updated: September 18, 2026 · BenchLM version AI-Needle 2026

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