Research benchmarks map directly to production building blocks.
- Best image classifier:
- EVA-02-L (90.0% ImageNet) / EfficientNetV2 for production
- Best object detector:
- YOLO11x for real-time / Co-DETR for accuracy (63.3 mAP)
- Best segmenter:
- SAM 2 for zero-shot / Mask2Former for trained models
- Best OCR:
- Qwen3-VL (96.5% DocVQA) / PaddleOCR (free, local)
- Best image embeddings:
- SigLIP / OpenCLIP for search and similarity
- The pattern:
- Benchmark task = Building block = Production feature
Computer Vision Benchmarks 2025
From ImageNet papers to production pipelines. Every CV benchmark maps to a building block you can deploy today.
How research connects to production
Image Understanding
Core visual perception tasks
Image Classification
EntryAssign a single label to an entire image
Object Detection
MediumLocate and classify multiple objects with bounding boxes
Semantic Segmentation
MediumClassify every pixel in an image
Instance Segmentation
HardSegment individual object instances separately
Document & Text
Reading and understanding documents
Document OCR
MediumExtract text from scanned documents and images
Scene Text Detection
MediumFind text in natural images (signs, products, street scenes)
Document Understanding
HardExtract semantic structure from documents (tables, forms, layouts)
Handwriting Recognition
HardConvert handwritten text to digital text
3D & Depth
Understanding spatial structure
Depth Estimation
MediumPredict distance from camera for each pixel
Image to 3D
HardGenerate 3D models from single or multiple images
Multimodal Vision
Combining vision with language
Image Captioning
MediumGenerate natural language descriptions of images
Visual Question Answering
MediumAnswer questions about image content
Image Search / Retrieval
EntryFind images using text queries or similar images
Code Examples
Production-ready code for common CV tasks. All examples use the best available open-source models.
Image Classification with ViT
Classify images using Vision Transformer
pip install transformers torch pillowfrom transformers import AutoImageProcessor, AutoModelForImageClassification
from PIL import Image
import torch
# Load model (swap for EfficientNet, ConvNeXt, etc.)
processor = AutoImageProcessor.from_pretrained("google/vit-large-patch16-224")
model = AutoModelForImageClassification.from_pretrained("google/vit-large-patch16-224")
# Classify an image
image = Image.open("photo.jpg")
inputs = processor(images=image, return_tensors="pt")
with torch.no_grad():
outputs = model(**inputs)
predicted_class_idx = outputs.logits.argmax(-1).item()
print(f"Predicted: {model.config.id2label[predicted_class_idx]}")Object Detection with YOLO11
Real-time object detection and localization
pip install ultralyticsfrom ultralytics import YOLO
# Load YOLO11 (best real-time detector)
model = YOLO("yolo11x.pt")
# Run detection
results = model("image.jpg")
# Process results
for result in results:
boxes = result.boxes # Bounding boxes
for box in boxes:
cls = int(box.cls[0])
conf = float(box.conf[0])
xyxy = box.xyxy[0].tolist() # [x1, y1, x2, y2]
print(f"{model.names[cls]}: {conf:.2f} at {xyxy}")
# Or just save annotated image
results[0].save("output.jpg")Segmentation with SAM 2
Zero-shot segmentation with point prompts
pip install transformers torch pillowfrom transformers import SamModel, SamProcessor
from PIL import Image
import torch
# Load SAM 2 (best zero-shot segmenter)
processor = SamProcessor.from_pretrained("facebook/sam-vit-huge")
model = SamModel.from_pretrained("facebook/sam-vit-huge")
image = Image.open("photo.jpg")
# Segment with a point prompt (x, y coordinates)
input_points = [[[400, 300]]] # Center of object to segment
inputs = processor(image, input_points=input_points, return_tensors="pt")
with torch.no_grad():
outputs = model(**inputs)
masks = processor.image_processor.post_process_masks(
outputs.pred_masks,
inputs["original_sizes"],
inputs["reshaped_input_sizes"]
)
# masks[0] contains the segmentation maskImage Embeddings with CLIP
Text-to-image search with OpenCLIP
pip install open-clip-torch pillowimport open_clip
import torch
from PIL import Image
# Load CLIP/SigLIP for image embeddings
model, _, preprocess = open_clip.create_model_and_transforms(
'ViT-L-14', pretrained='laion2b_s32b_b82k'
)
model.eval()
tokenizer = open_clip.get_tokenizer('ViT-L-14')
# Embed an image
image = preprocess(Image.open('photo.jpg')).unsqueeze(0)
with torch.no_grad():
image_features = model.encode_image(image)
image_features /= image_features.norm(dim=-1, keepdim=True)
# Search with text
text = tokenizer(['a photo of a cat', 'a photo of a dog'])
with torch.no_grad():
text_features = model.encode_text(text)
text_features /= text_features.norm(dim=-1, keepdim=True)
# Cosine similarity
similarity = (100.0 * image_features @ text_features.T).softmax(dim=-1)
print(f"Cat: {similarity[0][0]:.1%}, Dog: {similarity[0][1]:.1%}")Evolution of Computer Vision
Deep learning revolution begins
Enabled training very deep networks
Attention mechanism emerges
Transformers beat CNNs on ImageNet
Text-image understanding unified
Zero-shot segmentation at scale
GPT-4V, Claude 3 Vision, Gemini Pro Vision
One model for detection + segmentation + depth
Explore Building Blocks
Every benchmark task maps to a building block with implementations, code examples, and production patterns.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best image classification model in 2025?
For raw accuracy: EVA-02-L at 90.0% on ImageNet. For production: EfficientNetV2 or ConvNeXt balance accuracy and speed. For edge/mobile: MobileNetV4.
Should I use YOLO or a transformer-based detector?
YOLO11/YOLOv8 for real-time applications (30+ FPS). RT-DETR or DINO for higher accuracy when latency is less critical. YOLO is also easier to deploy and has better tooling.
How do I choose between classification, detection, and segmentation?
Classification: "Is this a cat?" (one label per image). Detection: "Where are the cats?" (bounding boxes). Segmentation: "Which pixels are cats?" (pixel masks). Start with the simplest approach that meets your needs.
What's the best way to implement visual search?
Use CLIP/SigLIP to embed images as vectors, store in FAISS or Pinecone, and search with text or image queries. See our Image Embedding building block for implementation details.
Related Resources
Have benchmark results to share?
We're expanding CV coverage. Submit new SOTA results or suggest benchmarks.