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configs:
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data_files:
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path: v1_2024/test-*
- config_name: v1_2025
data_files:
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path: v1_2025/test-*
AetherCode: Evaluating LLMs' Ability to Win In Premier Programming Competitions
Introduction
Competitive programming has emerged as a critical benchmark for evaluating the reasoning and coding capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). Despite impressive progress on existing benchmarks, we argue that current evaluations overstate model proficiency, masking a substantial gap between LLMs and elite human programmers. This gap arises from two key limitations: insufficient difficulty and scope of benchmark problems, and evaluation bias from low-quality test cases. To address these shortcomings, we present AetherCode, a new benchmark that draws problems from premier programming competitions such as IOI and ICPC, offering broader coverage and higher difficulty. AetherCode further incorporates comprehensive, expert-validated test suites built through a hybrid of automated generation and human curation, ensuring rigorous and reliable assessment. By combining challenging problem design with robust evaluation, AetherCode provides a more faithful measure of LLM capabilities and sets a new standard for future research in code reasoning.
Highlights
Problem Curation from Top-Tier Competitions: AetherCode is among the first benchmark to systematically collect problems from premier programming competitions worldwide, including the Olympiad in Informatics (OI) and the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). Our process involved a comprehensive collection, meticulous cleaning, and format conversion of problems from PDF to a Markdown+LaTeX structure. Each problem statement was manually proofread for correctness, and a team of competitive programming experts mannotated each problem with classification tags.
High-Quality Test Cases: We developed a hybrid methodology, combining automated generation with expert annotation, to create high-quality test cases for every problem. We evaluated the correctness and comprehensiveness of our test cases by validating them against a large corpus of collected solutions, enforcing a standard of zero false positives and zero false negatives.
Quickstart
from datasets import load_dataset
# Load AetherCode v1 2024 (Jan 2024 - Dec 2024)
ds = load_dataset("m-a-p/AetherCode", "v1_2024")
# Load AetherCode v1 2025 (Jan 2025 - May 2025)
ds = load_dataset("m-a-p/AetherCode", "v1_2025")
Evaluation Results
| Model | Easy | Medium | Hard | Extreme | 2024 | 2025 | Pass@1 | Pass@2 | Pass@4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning Models | |||||||||
| o4-mini-high | 65.3 | 32.1 | 8.0 | 3.8 | 35.8 | 32.6 | 35.5 | 43.0 | 46.6 |
| Gemini-2.5-Pro | 60.1 | 28.6 | 8.5 | 2.5 | 33.7 | 25.0 | 32.7 | 39.8 | 46.0 |
| Seed-1.6-thinking-0715 | 53.9 | 20.2 | 4.7 | 0 | 28.3 | 14.7 | 26.6 | 33.0 | 38.5 |
| DeepSeek-R1-0528 | 46.2 | 16.0 | 3.8 | 0 | 23.4 | 14.3 | 22.3 | 27.4 | 32.4 |
| Gemini-2.5-Flash | 42.1 | 15.2 | 2.7 | 0 | 22.0 | 8.0 | 20.3 | 24.5 | 28.5 |
| Qwen3-235B-A22B | 37.6 | 12.4 | 1.9 | 0 | 19.1 | 7.1 | 17.6 | 21.7 | 25.2 |
| Qwen3-32B | 34.8 | 10.9 | 2.7 | 0 | 17.7 | 6.7 | 16.3 | 20.4 | 23.9 |
| Qwen3-8B | 23.7 | 4.8 | 0.8 | 0 | 11.1 | 2.7 | 10.0 | 13.0 | 15.5 |
| Non-Reasoning Models | |||||||||
| GPT-4.1 | 23.9 | 5.7 | 1.1 | 0 | 11.3 | 4.5 | 10.5 | 13.2 | 15.3 |
| Kimi-K2 | 23.1 | 4.7 | 1.0 | 0 | 10.6 | 4.0 | 9.8 | 12.2 | 14.5 |
| DeepSeek-V3-0324 | 20.8 | 4.0 | 0 | 0 | 8.9 | 5.4 | 8.5 | 10.5 | 12.3 |
| Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B | 19.7 | 2.2 | 0.6 | 0 | 8.6 | 1.8 | 7.7 | 9.9 | 11.8 |
| GPT-4o | 11.6 | 1.0 | 0.2 | 0 | 4.9 | 1.3 | 4.4 | 5.6 | 7.0 |
Contest List and Release Schedule
In future updates, we will maintain both an open set and a private set simultaneously. The open set contains complete test cases, while the private set does not include test cases to ensure a fair evaluation. In subsequent updates, new problems will be added to the private set, and the test cases of problems in the private set will be gradually made public. In AetherCode v1, the open set includes all problems from 2024 (in subset v1_2024), and the private set includes problems from January to May 2025 (in subset v1_2025). If you need the evaluation results for the private set, please use the evaluation script we provide and send the LLM's responses to [email protected].
AetherCode v1 (Jan 2024 - May 2025) include problems from the following contests.
| Competition Name | Category | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Croatian Open Competition in Informatics 2023/2024 Contest #3 | Croatian OI | 2024/1/13 |
| USACO 2024 January Contest (Platinum) | USACO Platinum | 2024/1/26 |
| The 2023-2024 ICPC Southwestern Europe Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/1/28 |
| Croatian Open Competition in Informatics 2023/2024 Contest #4 | Croatian OI | 2024/2/10 |
| USACO 2024 February Contest (Platinum) | USACO Platinum | 2024/2/16 |
| USACO 2024 US Open Contest (Platinum) | USACO Platinum | 2024/3/15 |
| Singapore National Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Final Contest | NOI (SG) | 2024/3/16 |
| Croatian Open Competition in Informatics 2023/2024 Contest #5 | Croatian OI | 2024/3/16 |
| The 2024 ICPC Latin America Championship | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2024/3/17 |
| The 2024 ICPC Europe Championship | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2024/3/24 |
| The 2024 British Informatics Olympiad Final | British OI | 2024/4/6 |
| Baltic Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 1 | Baltic OI | 2024/5/4 |
| Baltic Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 2 | Baltic OI | 2024/5/5 |
| Asia-Pacific Informatics Olympiad 2024 (APIO 2024) | APIO | 2024/5/18 |
| The 2024 ICPC North America Championship | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2024/5/27 |
| Central European Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 1 (CEOI 2024 Day 1) | Central European OI | 2024/6/25 |
| Central European Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 2 (CEOI 2024 Day 2) | Central European OI | 2024/6/27 |
| China National Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 1 | NOI | 2024/7/18 |
| China National Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 2 | NOI | 2024/7/20 |
| European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 1 | European Girl's OI | 2024/7/23 |
| European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 2 | European Girl's OI | 2024/7/25 |
| International Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 1 | IOI | 2024/9/3 |
| International Olympiad in Informatics 2024 Day 2 | IOI | 2024/9/5 |
| The 2024 ICPC World Finals Astana | ICPC World Finals | 2024/9/19 |
| The 2024 ICPC Kunming Invitational Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/9/28 |
| The 2024 Nordic Collegiate Programming Contest | NCPC | 2024/10/5 |
| Croatian Open Competition in Informatics 2024/2025 Contest #1 | Croatian OI | 2024/10/5 |
| CCPC 2024 Harbin Site | CCPC | 2024/10/26 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Chengdu Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/10/27 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Nanjing Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/3 |
| Croatian Open Competition in Informatics 2024/2025 Contest #2 | Croatian OI | 2024/11/9 |
| 2024-2025 ICPC Latin American Regional Programming Contest | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2024/11/9 |
| 2024 Rocky Mountain Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/9 |
| 2024 North Central NA Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/9 |
| 2024 Mid-Central USA Programming Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/9 |
| CCPC 2024 Chongqing Site | CCPC | 2024/11/10 |
| The 2024 ICPC Greater NY Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/10 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Hangzhou Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/10 |
| CCPC 2024 Jinan Site | CCPC | 2024/11/16 |
| The 2024 ICPC Pacific Northwest Regional Contest (Div. 1) | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/16 |
| The 2024 ICPC Pacific Northwest Regional Contest (Div. 2) | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/16 |
| ICPC NA South Division 2024 - Division 2 | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/16 |
| ICPC NA South Division 2024 - Division 1 | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/16 |
| The 2024 ICPC Southern California Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/16 |
| The 2024 ICPC Southeastern Europe Regional Contest (SEERC 2024) | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/17 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Shanghai Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/17 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Seoul Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/23 |
| The 2024 ICPC Northwestern Europe Regional Contest (NWERC 2024) | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/24 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Shenyang Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/11/24 |
| Romanian Master of Informatics 2024 Day 1 | Romanian OI | 2024/11/28 |
| Romanian Master of Informatics 2024 Day 2 | Romanian OI | 2024/11/29 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Kunming Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/12/1 |
| Croatian Open Competition in Informatics 2024/2025 Contest #3 | Croatian OI | 2024/12/12 |
| USACO 2024 December Contest (Platinum) | USACO Platinum | 2024/12/13 |
| The 2024 ICPC Northern Eurasia Finals | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2024/12/15 |
| The 2024 ICPC Central Europe Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/12/15 |
| CCPC 2024 Zhengzhou Site | CCPC | 2024/12/21 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Yokohama Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/12/22 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia Hong Kong Regional Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2024/12/22 |
| The 2024 ICPC Asia East Continent Final Contest | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2024/12/28 |
| USACO 2025 January Contest (Platinum) | USACO Platinum | 2025/1/24 |
| Croatian Open Competition in Informatics 2024/2025 Contest #4 | Croatian OI | 2025/1/25 |
| The 24th Japanese Olympiad in Informatics Final Round (JOI 2024/2025) | Japanese OI | 2025/2/2 |
| Croatian Open Competition in Informatics 2024/2025 Contest #5 | Croatian OI | 2025/2/15 |
| USACO 2025 February Contest (Platinum) | USACO Platinum | 2025/2/21 |
| The 2025 ICPC Europe Championship | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2025/3/2 |
| 2025 ICPC Asia West Finals | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2025/3/7 |
| The 2025 ICPC Latin America Championship | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2025/3/16 |
| USACO 2025 US Open Contest (Platinum) | USACO Platinum | 2025/3/21 |
| Singapore National Olympiad in Informatics 2025 Final Contest | NOI (SG) | 2025/3/22 |
| The 2025 British Informatics Olympiad Final | British OI | 2025/4/12 |
| Baltic Olympiad in Informatics 2025 Day 1 | Baltic OI | 2025/4/26 |
| Baltic Olympiad in Informatics 2025 Day 2 | Baltic OI | 2025/4/27 |
| The 2025 ICPC China Zhejiang Province Programming Contest (22nd) | ICPC Regional Contests | 2025/5/10 |
| CCPC Final 2024 | CCPC Final | 2025/5/11 |
| Asia-Pacific Informatics Olympiad 2025 (APIO 2025) | APIO | 2025/5/17 |
| The 2025 ICPC Asia Wuhan Invitational Contest | ICPC Regional Contests | 2025/5/17 |
| The 2025 ICPC North America Championship | ICPC Regional Championships/Finals | 2025/5/26 |
License
This project is licensed under CC-BY-4.0. See the LICENSE file for details.
Citation
@misc{aethercode,
title={AetherCode: Evaluating LLMs' Ability to Win In Premier Programming Competitions},
author={Zihan Wang and Jiaze Chen and Zhicheng Liu and Markus Mak and Yidi Du and Geonsik Moon and Luoqi Xu and Aaron Tua and Kunshuo Peng and Jiayi Lu and Mingfei Xia and Boqian Zou and Chenyang Ran and Guang Tian and Shoutai Zhu and Yeheng Duan and Zhenghui Kang and Zhenxing Lin and Shangshu Li and Qiang Luo and Qingshen Long and Zhiyong Chen and Yihan Xiao and Yurong Wu and Daoguang Zan and Yuyi Fu and Mingxuan Wang and Ming Ding},
year={2025},
eprint={2508.16402},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={cs.SE},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16402},
}