# ClaimCheck: Real-Time Fact-Checking with Small Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01226 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01226/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 13 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [A Survey on Automated Fact-Checking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11896/) (2021)
- [AVeriTeC: A Dataset for Real-world Claim Verification with Evidence from the Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13117/) (2023)
- [DEFAME: Dynamic Evidence-based FAct-checking with Multimodal Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10510/) (2024)
- [The Automated Verification of Textual Claims (AVeriTeC) Shared Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23850/) (2024)
- [OpenFactCheck: A Unified Framework for Factuality Evaluation of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11832/) (2024)
- [HerO at AVeriTeC: The Herd of Open Large Language Models for Verifying Real-World Claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12377/) (2024)
- [Multi-hop Evidence Pursuit Meets the Web: Team Papelo at FEVER 2024](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05762/) (2024)
- [PASS-FC: Progressive and Adaptive Search Scheme for Fact Checking of Comprehensive Claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09866/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce ClaimCheck, an LLM-guided automatic fact-checking system designed to verify real-world claims using live Web evidence and small language models. Unlike prior systems that rely on large, closed-source models and static knowledge stores, ClaimCheck employs a transparent, stepwise verification pipeline that mirrors human fact-checking workflows consisting of Web search query planning, Web-based evidence retrieval and summarization, evidence synthesis and re-retrieval, and claim verdict evaluation. Each module is optimized for small LLMs, allowing the system to deliver accurate and interpretable fact-checking with significantly lower computational requirements. Despite using a much smaller Qwen3-4B model, ClaimCheck achieves state-of-the-art accuracy of 76.4% on the AVeriTeC dataset, outperforming previous approaches using LLaMA3.1 70B and GPT-4o. Extensive ablations demonstrate that careful modular design and prompting strategies can overcome the limitations of smaller LLMs. To promote accessibility and transparency, we provide a public demo at https://idir.uta.edu/claimcheck.