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EMNLP Findings2025

ACEBench: A Comprehensive Evaluation of LLM Tool Usage

Chen Chen, Xinlong Hao, Weiwen Liu, Xu Huang, Xingshan Zeng, Shuai Yu, Dexun Li, Yuefeng Huang, Xiangcheng Liu, Xinzhi Wang, Wu Liu

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant potential in decision-making and reasoning, particularly when integrated with various tools to effectively solve complex problems. However, existing benchmarks for evaluating LLMs' tool usage face several limitations: (1) limited evaluation scenarios, often lacking assessments in real multi-turn dialogue contexts; (2) narrow evaluation dimensions, with insufficient detailed assessments of how LLMs use tools; and (3) reliance on LLMs or real API executions for evaluation, which introduces significant overhead. To address these challenges, we introduce ACEBench, a comprehensive benchmark for assessing tool usage in LLMs. ACEBench categorizes data into three primary types based on evaluation methodology: Normal, Special, and Agent. "Normal" evaluates tool usage in basic scenarios; "Special" evaluates tool usage in situations with ambiguous or incomplete instructions; "Agent" evaluates tool usage through multi-agent interactions to simulate real-world, multi-turn dialogues. We conducted extensive experiments using ACEBench, analyzing various LLMs in-depth and providing a more granular examination of error causes across different data types.

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Cited by top-tier papers2

  1. Discovery and Reinforcement of Tool-Integrated Reasoning Chains via Rollout TreesKun Li, Zenan Xu, Junan Li, Zengrui Jin et al.ACL 2026 · 1 citation
  2. AgentSuite: Toward More Reliable Agent Evaluation with a Component-Based Benchmark Auditing PipelineHyewon Suh, Binfei Ji, Seojune Lee, Rishi Khare et al.ICML 2026

Builds on9

  1. Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use ToolsTimo Schick, Jane Dwivedi-Yu, Roberto Dessì, Roberta Raileanu et al.NeurIPS 2023 · 5,989 citations
  2. ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIsYujia Qin, Shihao Liang, Yining Ye, Kunlun Zhu et al.ICLR 2024 · 1,469 citations
  3. ViperGPT: Visual Inference via Python Execution for ReasoningDídac Surís, Sachit Menon, Carl VondrickICCV 2023 · 732 citations
  4. ToRA: A Tool-Integrated Reasoning Agent for Mathematical Problem SolvingZhibin Gou, Zhihong Shao, Yeyun Gong, Yelong Shen et al.ICLR 2024 · 289 citations
  5. MetaTool Benchmark for Large Language Models: Deciding Whether to Use Tools and Which to UseYue Huang, Jiawen Shi, Yuan Li, Chenrui Fan et al.ICLR 2024 · 188 citations

Related papers

  1. MTU-Bench: A Multi-granularity Tool-Use Benchmark for Large Language ModelsPei Wang, Yanan Wu, Noah Wang, Jiaheng Liu et al.ICLR 2025
  2. Do LLMs Catch Their Own Mistakes? A Comprehensive Benchmark for Reflective Tool Use LLMsZheyuan Liu, Liqiang Xiao, Yang Li, Hyokun Yun et al.ACL Findings 2026
  3. TRAJECT-Bench: A Trajectory-Aware Benchmark for Evaluating Agentic Tool UsePengfei He, Zhenwei Dai, Bing He, Hui Liu et al.ICLR 2026 · 46 citations
  4. ACPBench: Reasoning About Action, Change, and PlanningHarsha Kokel, Michael Katz, Kavitha Srinivas, Shirin SohrabiAAAI 2025 · 35 citations
  5. MCP-Bench: Benchmarking Tool-Using LLM Agents with Complex Real-World Tasks via MCP ServersZhenting Wang, Qi Chang, Hemani Patel, Shashank Biju et al.ICLR 2026 · 109 citations
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