MCP-AgentBench: Evaluating Real-World Language Agent Performance with
  MCP-Mediated Tools
Authors: name: Zikang Guo; name: Benfeng Xu; name: Chiwei Zhu; name: Wentao Hong; name: Xiaorui Wang; name: Zhendong Mao
Published: 2025-09-10 14:08:40

Abstract: The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is rapidly emerging as a pivotal open
standard, designed to enhance agent-tool integration and interoperability, and
is positioned to unlock a new era of powerful, interconnected, and genuinely
utilitarian agentic AI. However, despite MCP's growing adoption, existing
benchmarks often fail to capture real-world agent performance within this new
paradigm, leading to a distorted perception of their true operational value and
an inability to reliably differentiate proficiencies. To bridge this critical
evaluation gap, we introduce MCP-AgentBench -- a comprehensive benchmark
specifically engineered to rigorously assess language agent capabilities in
MCP-mediated tool interactions. Core contributions of MCP-AgentBench include:
the establishment of a robust MCP testbed comprising 33 operational servers
with 188 distinct tools; the development of a benchmark featuring 600
systematically designed queries distributed across 6 distinct categories of
varying interaction complexity; and the introduction of MCP-Eval, a novel
outcome-oriented evaluation methodology prioritizing real-world task success.
Through extensive empirical evaluation of leading language agents, we provide
foundational insights. MCP-AgentBench aims to equip the research community with
a standardized and reliable framework to build, validate, and advance agents
capable of fully leveraging MCP's transformative benefits, thereby accelerating
progress toward truly capable and interoperable AI systems.