The biggest gap between AI labs isn't whether their agents get the job done. It's whether users actually enjoy working with them.
We tracked the best agent from @AnthropicAI, @OpenAI, @GoogleDeepMind, @Kimi_Moonshot, @SpaceXSI and @deepseek_ai across 4 key Agent Arena signals used between late June and the start of October to see how the industry is shifting.
Three things stood out:
1. Users like some agents far more than others.
On Praise vs Complaint, OpenAI and Anthropic sit at +35 points over the leaderboard average. Moonshot, xAI and DeepSeek land between +5 and +13. No other signal splits the labs this widely.
2. Agents are getting much better at delivery.
On Confirmed Success, the average lab's best model went from -4 to +14 points in three months. Anthropic leads with Claude Opus 5.5 (Max) at +20.
3. Labs are converging on error recovery and steering.
Since June, the spread between the six labs has more than halved on Bash Recovery (34 → 16 points) and nearly halved on Steerability (19 → 11).
In short, the labs are catching up on avoiding failures.
Leaving the user happy is where the top three are pulling away.