What is Arena?
Arena, known until January 2026 as LMArena and before that as Chatbot Arena, started as a UC Berkeley research project for comparing large language models. You type a prompt, two anonymous models answer it, and you vote for the response you prefer. The model names are only revealed after you vote.
Those votes feed public leaderboards that many people use to judge which AI models are best in practice. Today the site covers far more than text chat: there are leaderboards for web development, vision, documents, search, text to image, image editing, text to video and image to video. You can also pick a specific model and chat with it directly, or compare two chosen models side by side.
Main Features
- Blind battles between two anonymous models
- Side-by-side mode to compare models you choose
- Direct chat with a single model of your choice
- Public leaderboards built from community votes
- Categories for text, WebDev, vision, search, image and video
- Optional sign-in, no payment needed
How to Get Started with Arena
- Open arena.ai in your browser.
- Type a prompt into the chat box to start a battle between two anonymous models.
- Read both answers and vote for the better one to reveal the model names.
- Open the Leaderboard to see how models rank in each category.
Arena Pricing
Arena is free for everyone who chats and votes, and registration is optional. The company earns money from a separate commercial AI evaluation service sold to model labs and enterprises, not from users.
Who Should Use It?
- Anyone curious which AI model gives the best answers
- Developers choosing a model for a project
- Researchers and journalists following AI rankings
- People who want to try new models for free
- Teams comparing image and video generators
Arena Alternatives
- ChatHub AI: Chat with several AI models at once in one window.
- HuggingChat: Free chat with open-source models from Hugging Face.
- T3 Chat: Fast chat app that lets you switch between many models.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Arena free?
Yes. Chatting, voting and viewing the leaderboards are free, and you do not need an account to start.
Is Arena the same as LMArena?
Yes. LMArena rebranded to Arena in January 2026, and lmarena.ai now redirects to arena.ai.
How are the Arena leaderboards made?
They are built from millions of pairwise votes, where people compare two anonymous answers to the same prompt and pick the better one.