# EcomBench: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Foundation Agents in E-commerce

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08868 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08868/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12022/) (2023)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12045/) (2024)
- [WebShop: Towards Scalable Real-World Web Interaction with Grounded Language Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01206/) (2022)
- [GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12983/) (2023)
- [BrowseComp: A Simple Yet Challenging Benchmark for Browsing Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12516/) (2025)
- [Humanity's Last Exam](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14249/) (2025)
- [GLM-4.5: Agentic, Reasoning, and Coding (ARC) Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06471/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models with Iterative Retrieval-Generation Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15294/) (2023)
- [WebThinker: Empowering Large Reasoning Models with Deep Research Capability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21776/) (2025)
- [WebSailor: Navigating Super-human Reasoning for Web Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02592/) (2025)
- [Query Rewriting for Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14283/) (2023)
- [WebDancer: Towards Autonomous Information Seeking Agency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22648/) (2025)
- [WebWalker: Benchmarking LLMs in Web Traversal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07572/) (2025)
- [BrowseComp-ZH: Benchmarking Web Browsing Ability of Large Language Models in Chinese](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19314/) (2025)
- [WebShaper: Agentically Data Synthesizing via Information-Seeking Formalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15061/) (2025)
- [Alita: Generalist Agent Enabling Scalable Agentic Reasoning with Minimal Predefinition and Maximal Self-Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20286/) (2025)
- [SealQA: Raising the Bar for Reasoning in Search-Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01062/) (2025)
- [WideSearch: Benchmarking Agentic Broad Info-Seeking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07999/) (2025)
- [WebResearcher: Unleashing unbounded reasoning capability in Long-Horizon Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13309/) (2025)
- [WebSailor-V2: Bridging the Chasm to Proprietary Agents via Synthetic Data and Scalable Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13305/) (2025)
- [FutureX: An Advanced Live Benchmark for LLM Agents in Future Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11987/) (2025)
- [StockBench: Can LLM Agents Trade Stocks Profitably In Real-world Markets?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02209/) (2025)
- [ECom-Bench: Can LLM Agent Resolve Real-World E-commerce Customer Support Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05639/) (2025)
- [FinSearchComp: Towards a Realistic, Expert-Level Evaluation of Financial Search and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13160/) (2025)
- [A Functionality-Grounded Benchmark for Evaluating Web Agents in E-commerce Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15832/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [FutureX-Pro: Extending Future Prediction to High-Value Vertical Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12259/) (2026)
- [Agentic Environment Engineering for Large Language Models: A Survey of Environment Modeling, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12191/) (2026)
- [IndustryBench: Probing the Industrial Knowledge Boundaries of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10267/) (2026)
- [IndustryBench-MIPU: Benchmarking Multi-Image Attribute Value Extraction for Industrial Products](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14383/) (2026)
- [JADE: Expert-Grounded Dynamic Evaluation for Open-Ended Professional Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06486/) (2026)
- [AlphaEval: Evaluating Agents in Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12162/) (2026)
- [Valley3: Scaling Omni Foundation Models for E-commerce](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01278/) (2026)
- [IndustryLLM: Failure-Driven LLM Training for Industrial Procurement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31871/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Foundation agents have rapidly advanced in their ability to reason and interact with real environments, making the evaluation of their core capabilities increasingly important. While many benchmarks have been developed to assess agent performance, most concentrate on academic settings or artificially designed scenarios while overlooking the challenges that arise in real applications. To address this issue, we focus on a highly practical real-world setting, the e-commerce domain, which involves a large volume of diverse user interactions, dynamic market conditions, and tasks directly tied to real decision-making processes. To this end, we introduce EcomBench, a holistic E-commerce Benchmark designed to evaluate agent performance in realistic e-commerce environments. EcomBench is built from genuine user demands embedded in leading global e-commerce ecosystems and is carefully curated and annotated through human experts to ensure clarity, accuracy, and domain relevance. It covers multiple task categories within e-commerce scenarios and defines three difficulty levels that evaluate agents on key capabilities such as deep information retrieval, multi-step reasoning, and cross-source knowledge integration. By grounding evaluation in real e-commerce contexts, EcomBench provides a rigorous and dynamic testbed for measuring the practical capabilities of agents in modern e-commerce.