Baidu · 2026-04-30 · major
ERNIE 5.1 Preview — Baidu's New Flagship Hits #1 Chinese, #13 Global on LMArena Text
ERNIE 5.1 Preview scored 1,476 on LMArena Text Arena — #13 globally, #1 among Chinese models, ahead of DeepSeek V4-Pro. Baidu says it uses ~1/3 the parameters of ERNIE 5.0 at ~6% the training cost.
Baidu's ERNIE 5.1 Preview is the only Chinese model in LMArena's global top 15 and tops legal/government tasks worldwide.
Key specs
| Lmarena rank (global) | #13 |
|---|---|
| Lmarena rank (chinese) | #1 |
| Lmarena text score | 1,476 |
| Math rank | #9 global |
| Legal & gov rank | #1 global |
| Business / mgmt / financial ops rank | #4 global |
| Software & it services rank | #7 global |
What is it?
On April 30, 2026, Baidu published preview access to ERNIE 5.1 on LMArena. It ranked #1 among Chinese models and #13 globally on the LMArena Text leaderboard with a score of 1,476, ahead of DeepSeek V4-Pro. Baidu says the full ERNIE 5.1 will launch later at Baidu Create 2026; the preview is testable at ernie.baidu.com today, with API access promised soon.
How does it work?
Per Baidu, ERNIE 5.1 Preview uses roughly one-third the total parameters and roughly half the active parameters of ERNIE 5.0, and the training run cost about 6% of comparable models. Baidu attributes the gains to two techniques: 'decoupled fully-asynchronous reinforcement learning' for post-training and 'scaled agentic post-training' that mixes RL with tool-using rollouts. Specific architecture details and parameter counts are not yet disclosed.
Why does it matter?
DeepSeek-V4-Pro shipped only a week earlier — Baidu has already overtaken it on the human-preference leaderboard among Chinese labs. Category leaderboards put ERNIE 5.1 Preview at #1 globally on Legal & Government and #4 on Business, Management & Financial Ops, which is a strong signal for enterprise/government Chinese-language workloads. It's also evidence that Chinese labs continue to close the global gap with smaller, cheaper-to-train models.
Who is it for?
Teams shipping LLM products in Chinese; enterprise buyers evaluating Chinese frontier labs
Try it
Chat at https://ernie.baidu.com/