OSWorld-MCP: Benchmarking MCP Tool Invocation In Computer-Use Agents
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code
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Abstract (arXiv)
With advances in decision-making and reasoning capabilities, multimodal agents show strong potential in computer application scenarios. Past evaluations have mainly assessed GUI interaction skills, while tool invocation abilities, such as those enabled by the Model Context Protocol (MCP), have been largely overlooked. Comparing agents with integrated tool invocation to those evaluated only on GUI interaction is inherently unfair. We present OSWorld-MCP, the first comprehensive and fair benchmark for assessing computer-use agents' tool invocation, GUI operation, and decision-making abilities in a real-world environment. We design a novel automated code-generation pipeline to create tools and combine them with a curated selection from existing tools. Rigorous manual validation yields 158 high-quality tools (covering 7 common applications), each verified for correct functionality, practical applicability, and versatility. Extensive evaluations of state-of-the-art multimodal agents on OSWorld-MCP show that MCP tools generally improve task success rates (e.g., from 8.3% to 20.4% for OpenAI o3 at 15 steps, from 40.1% to 43.3% for Claude 4 Sonnet at 50 steps), underscoring the importance of assessing tool invocation capabilities. However, even the strongest models have relatively low tool invocation rates, Only 36.3%, indicating room for improvement and highlighting the benchmark's challenge. By explicitly measuring MCP tool usage skills, OSWorld-MCP deepens understanding of multimodal agents and sets a new standard for evaluating performance in complex, tool-assisted environments. Our code, environment, and data are publicly available at https://osworld-mcp.github.io.
Key facts. Cited by 25 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 32 of its 41 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Oct 2025.
Builds on
32 of 41 references.
References · 32
- 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
- 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,146
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,418
- 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,655
- 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 1,908
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- 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Webcited by 1,210
- 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environmentscited by 1,134
- 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agentscited by 584
- 2024AndroidWorld: A Dynamic Benchmarking Environment for Autonomous Agentscited by 450
- 2025Seed1.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 367
- 2024WorkArena: How Capable Are Web Agents at Solving Common Knowledge Work Tasks?cited by 348
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- 2024Mobile-Agent: Autonomous Multi-Modal Mobile Device Agent with Visual Perceptioncited by 283
- 2025GUI-R1 : A Generalist R1-Style Vision-Language Action Model For GUI Agentscited by 240
- 2024Windows Agent Arena: Evaluating Multi-Modal OS Agents at Scalecited by 212
- 2024Mobile-Agent-v2: Mobile Device Operation Assistant with Effective Navigation via Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 187
- 2025Mobile-Agent-v3: Fundamental Agents for GUI Automationcited by 183
- 2024WebLINX: Real-World Website Navigation with Multi-Turn Dialoguecited by 177
- 2025UI-R1: Enhancing Efficient Action Prediction of GUI Agents by Reinforcement Learningcited by 166
- 2024OmniACT: A Dataset and Benchmark for Enabling Multimodal Generalist Autonomous Agents for Desktop and Webcited by 156
- 2025Mobile-Agent-E: Self-Evolving Mobile Assistant for Complex Taskscited by 128
- 2025OS-Harm: A Benchmark for Measuring Safety of Computer Use Agentscited by 104
- 2025MCP-Bench: Benchmarking Tool-Using LLM Agents with Complex Real-World Tasks via MCP Serverscited by 101
- 2025A survey of agent interoperability protocols: Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A), and Agent Network Protocol (ANP)cited by 98
- 2024MMInA: Benchmarking Multihop Multimodal Internet Agentscited by 55
- 2025ComputerRL: Scaling End-to-End Online Reinforcement Learning for Computer Use Agentscited by 49
- 2025MCP-RADAR: A Multi-Dimensional Benchmark for Evaluating Tool Use Capabilities in Large Language Modelscited by 48
- 2025LiveMCPBench: Can Agents Navigate an Ocean of MCP Tools?cited by 47
- 2025OSWorld-Human: Benchmarking the Efficiency of Computer-Use Agentscited by 37
- 2025MCPEval: Automatic MCP-based Deep Evaluation for AI Agent Modelscited by 34
- 2025CoAct-1: Computer-using Multi-Agent System with Coding Actionscited by 33
- 2025UI-S1: Advancing GUI Automation via Semi-online Reinforcement Learningcited by 32
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 23.
25 papers.
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- 2026Mobile-Agent-v3.5: Multi-platform Fundamental GUI Agentscited by 72
- 2025MobileWorld: Benchmarking Autonomous Mobile Agents in Agent-User Interactive and MCP-Augmented Environmentscited by 69
- 2026OSWorld 2.0: Benchmarking Computer Use Agents on Long-Horizon Real-World Taskscited by 29
- 2026ToolCUA: Towards Optimal GUI-Tool Path Orchestration for Computer Use Agentscited by 10
- 2026From Question Answering to Task Completion: A Survey on Agent System and Harness Designcited by 9
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- 2026GUI Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Toward Digital Inhabitantscited by 3
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- 2026Beyond Simply Environment Scaling: Designing Effective Environment Distributions for Multimodal Agent Learningcited by 2
- 2026CUA-Universe: A Scalable and Dynamic Environment for Hybrid GUI+CLI Agentscited by 1
- 2025Training One Model to Master Cross-Level Agentic Actions via Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026TOBench: A Task-Oriented Omni-Modal Benchmark for Real-World Tool-Using Agentscited by 0
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- 2026The Hard Part Comes After Search: Benchmarking Web Agents on Synthesizing, Organizing, and Displaying Knowledgecited by 0
- 2026HybridCUA: Learning to Orchestrate GUI and CLI for Computer-Use Agentscited by 0
- 2026OSWorld-Science: A Benchmark of Computer Use Agents for Learning and Using Scientific Softwarecited by 0
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- 2026HybridCUA: Learning to Orchestrate GUI and CLI for Computer-Use Agents29 Sep 2026
- 2026The Hard Part Comes After Search: Benchmarking Web Agents on Synthesizing, Organizing, and Displaying Knowledge24 Sep 2026
- 2026MintAct: A Unified Visual Agent for Digital Environments18 Sep 2026
- 2026Improving Proficiency and Efficiency of Android GUI Agents via Self-Generating Tool Actions6 Sep 2026
- 2026CUA-Universe: A Scalable and Dynamic Environment for Hybrid GUI+CLI Agents4 Sep 2026
- 2026Beyond Simply Environment Scaling: Designing Effective Environment Distributions for Multimodal Agent Learning4 Aug 2026
- 2026MM-ToolSandBox: A Unified Framework for Evaluating Visual Tool-Calling Agents13 Jul 2026
- 2026DynamicMCPBench: A Trace-Grounded, Effect-Scored Benchmark for LLM Agents over Live MCP Servers10 Jul 2026
- 2026OSWorld 2.0: Benchmarking Computer Use Agents on Long-Horizon Real-World Tasks28 Jun 2026
- 2026TUA-Bench: A Benchmark for General-Purpose Terminal-Use Agents26 Jun 2026
- 2026PhoneBuddy: Training Open Models for Agentic Phone Use22 Jun 2026
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- 2026Agentic Environment Engineering for Large Language Models: A Survey of Environment Modeling, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Application10 Jun 2026
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- 2026MCP-Persona: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Real-World Personal Applications via Environment Simulation1 Jun 2026
- 2026TOBench: A Task-Oriented Omni-Modal Benchmark for Real-World Tool-Using Agents16 May 2026
- 2026ToolCUA: Towards Optimal GUI-Tool Path Orchestration for Computer Use Agents12 May 2026
- 2026GUI Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Toward Digital Inhabitants30 Apr 2026
- 2026EE-MCP: Self-Evolving MCP-GUI Agents via Automated Environment Generation and Experience Learning10 Apr 2026
- 2026Visual Confused Deputy: Exploiting and Defending Perception Failures in Computer-Using Agents16 Mar 2026
- 2026Mobile-Agent-v3.5: Multi-platform Fundamental GUI Agents15 Feb 2026
- 2026MedMCP-Calc: Benchmarking LLMs for Realistic Medical Calculator Scenarios via MCP Integration30 Jan 2026
- 2025MobileWorld: Benchmarking Autonomous Mobile Agents in Agent-User Interactive and MCP-Augmented Environments22 Dec 2025
- 2025Training One Model to Master Cross-Level Agentic Actions via Reinforcement Learning10 Dec 2025
- 2026Mobile-Agent-v3.5: Multi-platform Fundamental GUI Agentscited by 72
- 2025MobileWorld: Benchmarking Autonomous Mobile Agents in Agent-User Interactive and MCP-Augmented Environmentscited by 69
- 2026OSWorld 2.0: Benchmarking Computer Use Agents on Long-Horizon Real-World Taskscited by 29
- 2026ToolCUA: Towards Optimal GUI-Tool Path Orchestration for Computer Use Agentscited by 10
- 2026From Question Answering to Task Completion: A Survey on Agent System and Harness Designcited by 9
- 2026Agentic Environment Engineering for Large Language Models: A Survey of Environment Modeling, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Applicationcited by 8
- 2026TUA-Bench: A Benchmark for General-Purpose Terminal-Use Agentscited by 7
- 2026DeskCraft: Benchmarking Desktop Agents on Professional Workflows and Human-in-the-Loop Collaborationcited by 4
- 2026PhoneBuddy: Training Open Models for Agentic Phone Usecited by 4
- 2026EE-MCP: Self-Evolving MCP-GUI Agents via Automated Environment Generation and Experience Learningcited by 3
- 2026GUI Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Toward Digital Inhabitantscited by 3
- 2026MCP-Persona: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Real-World Personal Applications via Environment Simulationcited by 2
12 most cited of 19 All 19 (JSON)
- 2026HybridCUA: Learning to Orchestrate GUI and CLI for Computer-Use Agents29 Sep 2026
- 2026The Hard Part Comes After Search: Benchmarking Web Agents on Synthesizing, Organizing, and Displaying Knowledge24 Sep 2026
- 2026Improving Proficiency and Efficiency of Android GUI Agents via Self-Generating Tool Actions6 Sep 2026
- 2026CUA-Universe: A Scalable and Dynamic Environment for Hybrid GUI+CLI Agents4 Sep 2026
- 2026MM-ToolSandBox: A Unified Framework for Evaluating Visual Tool-Calling Agents13 Jul 2026
- 2026DynamicMCPBench: A Trace-Grounded, Effect-Scored Benchmark for LLM Agents over Live MCP Servers10 Jul 2026
- 2026OSWorld 2.0: Benchmarking Computer Use Agents on Long-Horizon Real-World Tasks28 Jun 2026
- 2026TUA-Bench: A Benchmark for General-Purpose Terminal-Use Agents26 Jun 2026
- 2026PhoneBuddy: Training Open Models for Agentic Phone Use22 Jun 2026
- 2026From Question Answering to Task Completion: A Survey on Agent System and Harness Design14 Jun 2026
- 2026Agentic Environment Engineering for Large Language Models: A Survey of Environment Modeling, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Application10 Jun 2026
- 2026DeskCraft: Benchmarking Desktop Agents on Professional Workflows and Human-in-the-Loop Collaboration2 Jun 2026
12 newest of 19 All 19 (JSON)
- 2026MedMCP-Calc: Benchmarking LLMs for Realistic Medical Calculator Scenarios via MCP Integrationcited by 2
- 2026Beyond Simply Environment Scaling: Designing Effective Environment Distributions for Multimodal Agent Learningcited by 2
- 2026TOBench: A Task-Oriented Omni-Modal Benchmark for Real-World Tool-Using Agentscited by 0
- 2026Beyond Simply Environment Scaling: Designing Effective Environment Distributions for Multimodal Agent Learning4 Aug 2026
- 2026TOBench: A Task-Oriented Omni-Modal Benchmark for Real-World Tool-Using Agents16 May 2026
- 2026MedMCP-Calc: Benchmarking LLMs for Realistic Medical Calculator Scenarios via MCP Integration30 Jan 2026
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