mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Vision2Code: A Multi-Domain Benchmark for Evaluating Image-to-Code Generation

arXiv 2605.11307 ↗First posted 11 May 2026cs.CV cs.LGcited by 4

On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Chart understanding and anomaly detection

Abstract (arXiv)

We study whether vision-language models (VLMs) can reconstruct structured, graphics-based images by writing executable code to generate them. Existing benchmarks on image-to-code generation are generally limited in the domains they cover, rely on reference source code for evaluation, and do not provide metrics to quantify domain-specific issues. To address this, we introduce Vision2Code, a multi-domain, reference-code-free benchmark containing 539 test examples from 15 different datasets, spanning charts and plots, geometry, graphs, scientific diagrams, documents and 3D spatial scenes. Evaluation is done by executing the generated programs and comparing their rendered outputs to the source images using dataset- and domain-specific rubrics for a VLM judge. We find that the final scores obtained in this manner have substantially higher correlation with human ratings than those obtained via generic VLM rubrics or standard pixel-based, embedding-based or perceptual similarity metrics. We further demonstrate the reliability of our evaluation under repeated sampling from the VLM judges, varying rubric weights, and in the presence of controlled errors. Our results highlight the variability across domains of existing image-to-code generation models, with accuracy on charts and graphs being significantly higher than other domains. Lastly, we demonstrate the utility of our scoring method for rejection sampling of generated programs for fine-tuning, improving Qwen3.5-9B by 16% and Phi-4-MM by 28% compared to their base checkpoints. Our code and data are publicly available at https://image2code.github.io/vision2code/.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Chart understanding and anomaly detection, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 37 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 May 2026.

Builds on

37 of 43 references.

Closest ancestors · 9

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026RealChart2Code: Advancing Chart-to-Code Generation with Real Data and Multi-Task Evaluation26 Mar
  2. 2026Omni-I2C: A Holistic Benchmark for High-Fidelity Image-to-Code Generation18 Mar
  3. 2025UniSVG: A Unified Dataset for Vector Graphic Understanding and Generation with Multimodal Large Language Models11 Aug
  4. 2025SVGenius: Benchmarking LLMs in SVG Understanding, Editing and Generation3 Jun
  5. 2024EEE-Bench: A Comprehensive Multimodal Electrical And Electronics Engineering Benchmark3 Nov
  6. 2024Web2Code: A Large-scale Webpage-to-Code Dataset and Evaluation Framework for Multimodal LLMs28 Jun
  7. 2024ChartMimic: Evaluating LMM's Cross-Modal Reasoning Capability via Chart-to-Code Generation14 Jun
  8. 2024Unlocking the conversion of Web Screenshots into HTML Code with the WebSight Dataset14 Mar
  9. 2024Design2Code: Benchmarking Multimodal Code Generation for Automated Front-End Engineering5 Mar

Other references · 28

  1. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,744
  2. 2022ChartQA: A Benchmark for Question Answering about Charts with Visual and Logical Reasoningcited by 1,479
  3. 2020DocVQA: A Dataset for VQA on Document Imagescited by 1,317
  4. 2024OlympiadBench: A Challenging Benchmark for Promoting AGI with Olympiad-Level Bilingual Multimodal Scientific Problemscited by 1,136
  5. 2024SpatialVLM: Endowing Vision-Language Models with Spatial Reasoning Capabilitiescited by 706
  6. 2023ViperGPT: Visual Inference via Python Execution for Reasoningcited by 603
  7. 2024Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agentscited by 564
  8. 2022Visual Programming: Compositional visual reasoning without trainingcited by 516
  9. 2021Inter-GPS: Interpretable Geometry Problem Solving with Formal Language and Symbolic Reasoningcited by 383
  10. 2023Chameleon: Plug-and-Play Compositional Reasoning with Large Language Modelscited by 356
  11. 2018DVQA: Understanding Data Visualizations via Question Answeringcited by 340
  12. 2023DreamSim: Learning New Dimensions of Human Visual Similarity using Synthetic Datacited by 337
16 more
  1. 2017FigureQA: An Annotated Figure Dataset for Visual Reasoningcited by 319
  2. 2024Visual Sketchpad: Sketching as a Visual Chain of Thought for Multimodal Language Modelscited by 268
  3. 2021GeoQA: A Geometric Question Answering Benchmark Towards Multimodal Numerical Reasoningcited by 228
  4. 2025Zebra-CoT: A Dataset for Interleaved Vision Language Reasoningcited by 84
  5. 2025OmniSVG: A Unified Scalable Vector Graphics Generation Modelcited by 74
  6. 2023Visual Program Distillation: Distilling Tools and Programmatic Reasoning into Vision-Language Modelscited by 66
  7. 2023Modular Visual Question Answering via Code Generationcited by 48
  8. 2024MMCode: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Code Generation with Visually Rich Programming Problemscited by 40
  9. 2025First SFT, Second RL, Third UPT: Continual Improving Multi-Modal LLM Reasoning via Unsupervised Post-Trainingcited by 34
  10. 2025CodePlot-CoT: Mathematical Visual Reasoning by Thinking with Code-Driven Imagescited by 23
  11. 2024Image2Struct: Benchmarking Structure Extraction for Vision-Language Modelscited by 19
  12. 2025VCode: a Multimodal Coding Benchmark with SVG as Symbolic Visual Representationcited by 16
  13. 2024Euclid: Supercharging Multimodal LLMs with Synthetic High-Fidelity Visual Descriptionscited by 13
  14. 2026VectorGym: A Multi-Task Benchmark for SVG Code Generation, Sketching and Editingcited by 5
  15. 2026Figma2Code: Automating Multimodal Design to Code in the Wildcited by 3
  16. 2025RECODE: Reasoning Through Code Generation for Visual Question Answeringcited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026ShapeCodeBench: A Renewable Benchmark for Perception-to-Program Reconstruction of Synthetic Shape Scenes
  2. 2026Recursive Code World Models: Building Complex Worlds through Recursive Scene Programs
  3. 2024Plot2Code: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Multi-modal Large Language Models in Code Generation from Scientific Plots
  4. 2026Seeing is Coding: On the Effectiveness of Vision Language Models in Code Understanding
  5. 2026CodePercept: Code-Grounded Visual STEM Perception for MLLMs
  6. 2025PlotGen-Bench: Evaluating VLMs on Generating Visualization Code from Diverse Plots across Multiple Libraries
  7. 2026Animation2Code: Evaluating Temporal Visual Reasoning in Video-to-Code Generation
  8. 2026MT-Web2Code: Benchmarking Coding Agents on Multi-Turn Regional Reconstruction and Localized Modification