MNIST

Introduced by Y. LeCun et al. in Gradient-based learning applied to document recognition1 Nov 1998 archive 2025-07-28

The MNIST database (Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology database) is a large collection of handwritten digits. It has a training set of 60,000 examples, and a test set of 10,000 examples. It is a subset of a larger NIST Special Database 3 (digits written by employees of the United States Census Bureau) and Special Database 1 (digits written by high school students) which contain monochrome images of handwritten digits. The digits have been size-normalized and centered in a fixed-size image. The original black and white (bilevel) images from NIST were size normalized to fit in a 20x20 pixel box while preserving their aspect ratio. The resulting images contain grey levels as a result of the anti-aliasing technique used by the normalization algorithm. the images were centered in a 28x28 image by computing the center of mass of the pixels, and translating the image so as to position this point at the center of the 28x28 field.

Source: http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/ Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MNIST_database#/media/File:MnistExamples.png

Homepage Benchmarks Papers JSON

Benchmarks archive 2025-07-28

All 44 leaderboards whose dataset resolves to this page shown (sort by any header). "First row" is the archive's own first row at snapshot, in the archive's row order; nothing here re-ranks and metric direction is not asserted.

		First row (archive order)	Paper	Code
Image Classification	MNIST	Branching/Merging CNN + Homogeneous Vector Capsules Percentage error 0.13	No Routing Needed Between Capsules	AdamByerly/BMCNNwHFCs	81	Compare
Sequential Image Classification	Sequential MNIST	SMPConv Permuted Accuracy 99.10	SMPConv: Self-moving Point Representations for...	sangnekim/smpconv	30	Compare
Image Clustering	MNIST-full	SPC NMI 0.975	Selective Pseudo-label Clustering	Lou1sM/clustering	16	Compare
Image Generation	MNIST	Locally Masked PixelCNN (8 orders) bits/dimension 0.65	Locally Masked Convolution for Autoregressive Models	ajayjain/lmconv	15	Compare
Domain Adaptation	MNIST-to-USPS	FACT Accuracy 98.8	FACT: Federated Adversarial Cross Training	jonas-lippl/fact	14	Compare
Domain Adaptation	USPS-to-MNIST	FAMCD Accuracy 98.75	Unsupervised domain adaptation using feature aligned...	—	14	Compare
Graph Classification	MNIST	ESA (Edge set attention, no positional encodings, tuned) Accuracy 98.917±0.020	An end-to-end attention-based approach for learning on graphs	davidbuterez/edge-set-attention	13	Compare
Image Clustering	MNIST-test	DynAE NMI 0.963	Deep Clustering with a Dynamic Autoencoder: From...	nairouz/DynAE	11	Compare
Unsupervised Image Classification	MNIST	IIC Accuracy 99.3	Invariant Information Clustering for Unsupervised Image...	xu-ji/IIC +5	10	Compare
Domain Adaptation	SVNH-to-MNIST	SRDA (RAN) Accuracy 98.91	Learning Smooth Representation for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation	CuthbertCai/SRDA	9	Compare
Anomaly Detection	MNIST	GAN-based Anomaly Detection in Imbalance Problems ROC AUC 99.7	GAN-based Anomaly Detection in Imbalance Problems	—	6	Compare
Clustering Algorithms Evaluation	MNIST	AE+GIT ARI 77%	Git: Clustering Based on Graph of Intensity Topology	gaozhangyang/DGC +3	6	Compare
Density Estimation	MNIST	Identity NLL (bits/dim) 0.134	Backpropagation through Combinatorial Algorithms:...	khalil-research/pyepo +1	6	Compare
Superpixel Image Classification	75 Superpixel MNIST	Dynamic Reduction Network (256 HD) Classification Error 0.95	A Dynamic Reduction Network for Point Clouds	mcremone/graph-met	6	Compare
Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 0.1% anomaly	MNIST	LVAD AUC-ROC 0.974	Locally varying distance transform for unsupervised...	wen-yan-lin/LVAD-Locally-Varying-Anomaly-Detection	5	Compare
Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 20% anomaly	MNIST	LVAD AUC-ROC 0.923	Locally varying distance transform for unsupervised...	wen-yan-lin/LVAD-Locally-Varying-Anomaly-Detection	5	Compare
Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 1% anomaly	MNIST	LVAD AUC-ROC 0.948	Locally varying distance transform for unsupervised...	wen-yan-lin/LVAD-Locally-Varying-Anomaly-Detection	5	Compare
Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 10% anomaly	MNIST	LVAD AUC-ROC 0.938	Locally varying distance transform for unsupervised...	wen-yan-lin/LVAD-Locally-Varying-Anomaly-Detection	5	Compare
Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 30% anomaly	MNIST	LVAD AUC-ROC 0.904	Locally varying distance transform for unsupervised...	wen-yan-lin/LVAD-Locally-Varying-Anomaly-Detection	5	Compare
Unsupervised Image-To-Image Translation	SVNH-to-MNIST	CyCADA pixel+feat Classification Accuracy 90.4%	CyCADA: Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Domain Adaptation	thuml/Transfer-Learning-Library +2	4	Compare
Image Clustering	MNIST	TURTLE (CLIP + DINOv2) Accuracy 97.8	Let Go of Your Labels with Unsupervised Transfer	mlbio-epfl/turtle	3	Compare
Rotated MNIST	Rotated MNIST	Sim2-CNN Test error 0.59	Exploiting Redundancy: Separable Group Convolutional...	david-knigge/separable-group-convolutional-networks	3	Compare
Adversarial Defense	MNIST	Defense GAN Accuracy 0.8529	Defense-GAN: Protecting Classifiers Against Adversarial...	kabkabm/defensegan +4	2	Compare
Continuously Indexed Domain Adaptation	Indexed Rotating MNIST	PCIDA Accuracy (%) 87.1%	Continuously Indexed Domain Adaptation	hehaodele/CIDA	2	Compare
Domain Adaptation	Rotating MNIST	PCIDA Accuracy (%) 87.1%	Continuously Indexed Domain Adaptation	hehaodele/CIDA	2	Compare
Handwritten Digit Recognition	MNIST	CNN Accuracy 96.95%	Effective Handwritten Digit Recognition using Deep...	BharadwajYellapragada/Effective-Handwritten-Digit-Recognition-using-Deep-Convolution-Neural-Network	2	Compare
Image Classification	Noisy MNIST (AWGN)	PCGAN-CHAR Accuracy 98.43	PCGAN-CHAR: Progressively Trained Classifier Generative...	—	2	Compare
Image Classification	Noisy MNIST (Contrast)	PCGAN-CHAR Accuracy 97.25	PCGAN-CHAR: Progressively Trained Classifier Generative...	—	2	Compare
Image Classification	Noisy MNIST (Motion)	PCGAN-CHAR Accuracy 99.20	PCGAN-CHAR: Progressively Trained Classifier Generative...	—	2	Compare
Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithm	MNIST	Position-wise optimizer training time (s) 227	Position-wise optimizer: A nature-inspired optimization algorithm	—	2	Compare
Personalized Federated Learning	MNIST	SuPerFed-LM ACC@1-50Clients 99.48	Connecting Low-Loss Subspace for Personalized Federated Learning	vaseline555/superfed	2	Compare
Anomaly Detection	MNIST-test	OGNET F1 score 96.7	Old is Gold: Redefining the Adversarially Learned...	xaggi/OGNet	1	Compare
Continual Learning	Rotated MNIST	Model Zoo-Continual Average Accuracy 99.66	Model Zoo: A Growing "Brain" That Learns Continually	grasp-lyrl/modelzoo_continual +1	1	Compare
Core set discovery	MNIST	EvoCore F1(10-fold) 77.2	Uncovering Coresets for Classification With...	pietrobarbiero/meco	1	Compare
Deep Clustering	MNIST	DEKM NMI 91.06	Deep Embedded K-Means Clustering	spdj2271/DEKM +1	1	Compare
Fine-Grained Image Classification	MNIST	Vanilla FC layer only Accuracy 98.19	ProgressiveSpinalNet architecture for FC layers	praveenchopra/ProgressiveSpinalNet	1	Compare
General Classification	MNIST	CAE Accuracy 90.6	Concrete Autoencoders for Differentiable Feature...	mfbalin/Concrete-Autoencoders +1	1	Compare
Image Classification	mnist	WaveMixLite Percentage error 0.25	WaveMix: A Resource-efficient Neural Network for Image Analysis	pranavphoenix/WaveMix	1	Compare
Network Pruning	MNIST	FFN-ShapleyPruned Avg #Steps 12.05	Analysing Neural Network Topologies: a Game Theoretic Approach	—	1	Compare
Neural Architecture Search	MNIST	Sparse Neural Network R2 0.9314	Structural Analysis of Sparse Neural Networks	—	1	Compare
One-Shot Learning	MNIST	Siamese Neural Network Accuracy 97.5	Siamese neural networks for one-shot image recognition	tensorfreitas/Siamese-Networks-for-One-Shot-Learning +9	1	Compare
Stochastic Optimization	MNIST	MLP NLL 0.0541	Training Deep Networks without Learning Rates Through...	tensorflow/addons +5	1	Compare
Structured Prediction	MNIST	CVAE Negative CLL 71.8	Learning Structured Output Representation using Deep...	ucals/cvae	1	Compare
Unsupervised Anomaly Detection	MNIST	LVAD AUROC 0.937	Locally varying distance transform for unsupervised...	wen-yan-lin/LVAD-Locally-Varying-Anomaly-Detection	1	Compare

Papers archive 2025-07-28

30 shown of 216 papers with a leaderboard row on this dataset's benchmarks, newest first. The archive's own "papers using this dataset" list was never published, so this is the benchmark-backed subset; the archive's count for this dataset is 7,651. The Syntology column is from Syntology's graph (read 2026-09-24), stated per sample; it is not part of any archive number.

			Date	Samples run Syntology
Unlocking the Potential of Classic GNNs for Graph-level Tasks: Simple Architectures Meet Excellence	1	2	13 Feb 2025	ran 4 of 12 samples (8 unverified)
Evaluating the Performance of TAAF for image classification models	1	1	13 Feb 2025	not harvested
Hierarchical VAE with a Diffusion-based VampPrior	1	1	2 Dec 2024	ran 1 of 2 samples (1 unverified; 2 pointer-only for licence)
Learning local discrete features in explainable-by-design convolutional neural networks	1	1	31 Oct 2024	not harvested
Performance of Gaussian Mixture Model Classifiers on Embedded Feature Spaces	1	1	17 Oct 2024	not harvested
Learning in Wilson-Cowan model for metapopulation	1	2	24 Jun 2024	not harvested
rKAN: Rational Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks	1	1	20 Jun 2024	ran 2 of 2 samples (0 unverified)
Let Go of Your Labels with Unsupervised Transfer	1	2	11 Jun 2024	ran 3 of 4 samples (1 unverified; 4 pointer-only for licence)
fKAN: Fractional Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks with trainable Jacobi basis functions	1	1	11 Jun 2024	ran 1 of 1 samples (0 unverified)
Learning Long Range Dependencies on Graphs via Random Walks	1	1	5 Jun 2024	ran 13 of 13 samples (0 unverified)
Exploring Effects of Hyperdimensional Vectors for Tsetlin Machines	0	1	4 Jun 2024	not harvested
CKGConv: General Graph Convolution with Continuous Kernels	1	1	21 Apr 2024	ran 8 of 11 samples (3 unverified; 11 pointer-only for licence)
Explainable Deep Learning: A Visual Analytics Approach with Transition Matrices	1	1	29 Mar 2024	not harvested
PaddingFlow: Improving Normalizing Flows with Padding-Dimensional Noise	1	1	13 Mar 2024	not harvested
An end-to-end attention-based approach for learning on graphs	1	2	16 Feb 2024	not harvested
The VampPrior Mixture Model	1	2	6 Feb 2024	not harvested
Topology-Informed Graph Transformer	2	1	3 Feb 2024	ran 14 of 21 samples (7 unverified; 21 pointer-only for licence)
A Single Graph Convolution Is All You Need: Efficient Grayscale Image Classification	1	1	1 Feb 2024	not harvested
Graph Transformers without Positional Encodings	0	1	31 Jan 2024	not harvested
Parametric Matrix Models	0	2	22 Jan 2024	not harvested
Spiking-Diffusion: Vector Quantized Discrete Diffusion Model with Spiking Neural Networks	1	1	20 Aug 2023	not harvested
FACT: Federated Adversarial Cross Training	1	2	1 Jun 2023	not harvested
Graph Inductive Biases in Transformers without Message Passing	2	1	27 May 2023	ran 6 of 12 samples (6 unverified)
Adaptive-saturated RNN: Remember more with less instability	1	1	24 Apr 2023	ran 0 of 3 samples (3 unverified; 3 pointer-only for licence)
SMPConv: Self-moving Point Representations for Continuous Convolution	1	1	5 Apr 2023	ran 2 of 9 samples (7 unverified)
Exphormer: Sparse Transformers for Graphs	1	1	10 Mar 2023	ran 1 of 1 samples (0 unverified)
Contrastive Hierarchical Clustering	1	1	3 Mar 2023	not harvested
On the Ideal Number of Groups for Isometric Gradient Propagation	0	1	7 Feb 2023	not harvested
Trainable Activations for Image Classification	1	3	26 Jan 2023	not harvested
Personalized Federated Learning with Hidden Information on Personalized Prior	0	1	19 Nov 2022	not harvested

The full list of 216 is in the JSON twin.

Dataset loaders archive 2025-07-28

huggingface.co/datasets/severo/mnist huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/mnist huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/minpeter/mnist huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/ylecun/mnist huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/sc890/deepfruit_dataset huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/renumics/mnist-outlier huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/asoria/mnist huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/filwsyl/video_understanding huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/filwsyl/video_tags huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

huggingface.co/datasets/mqddb/test-dataset huggingface/datasetstfpytorchjax

pytorch.org/vision/stable/generated/torchvision.datasets.MNIST.html pytorch/visionpytorch

docs.voxel51.com/user_guide/dataset_zoo/datasets.html#mnist voxel51/fiftyonetfpytorch

docs.activeloop.ai/datasets/mnist activeloopai/Hubtfpytorch

www.tensorflow.org/datasets/catalog/mnist tensorflow/datasetstfjax

open-mmlab/mmclassification open-mmlab/mmclassificationpytorch

graphneural.network/datasets/#mnist danielegrattarola/spektraltf

gas.graviti.com/dataset/hellodataset/MNIST Graviti-AI/datasetstfpytorch

gitlab.com/afagarap/pt-datasetspytorch

18 loaders as listed in the archive; links are outbound and not re-checked here.

Tasks archive 2025-07-28

Image Classification Speech Recognition Question Answering Image Generation Text Classification Anomaly Detection Domain Adaptation Graph Classification Continual Learning Image Clustering Fine-Grained Image Classification Automatic Speech Recognition Neural Architecture Search Audio Classification Unsupervised Anomaly Detection Video Prediction Speech Emotion Recognition Density Estimation Core set discovery Stochastic Optimization Clustering Algorithms Evaluation Adversarial Defense General Classification Token Classification Semantic Similarity Unsupervised Image Classification Personalized Federated Learning Multiview Clustering Network Pruning Deep Clustering NER Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 30% anomaly Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 20% anomaly Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 1% anomaly Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 0.1% anomaly Unsupervised Anomaly Detection with Specified Settings -- 10% anomaly Sequential Image Classification Continuously Indexed Domain Adaptation Classification with Binary Weight Network POS Model Poisoning Sparse Learning and binarization Unsupervised Image-To-Image Translation Handwritten Digit Recognition Hard-label Attack Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithm Structured Prediction One-Shot Learning Unsupervised MNIST Rotated MNIST Superpixel Image Classification TAG Fill Mask Multi Label Text Classification Malicious Detection Adversarial Defense against FGSM Attack Iloko Speech Recognition candy animation generation text-to-speech Türkçe Görüntü Altyazılama PD-L1 Tumor Proportion Score Prediction

License archive 2025-07-28

Unknown

Modalities archive 2025-07-28

Images

Languages archive 2025-07-28

English

Variants archive 2025-07-28

USPS-to-MNIST
MNIST-to-USPS
Rotating MNIST
Noisy MNIST (Motion)
Noisy MNIST (Contrast)
Noisy MNIST (AWGN)
MNIST (Conditional)
Indexed Rotating MNIST
Rotated MNIST
Moving MNIST
Sequential MNIST
SVNH-to-MNIST
MNIST-test
MNIST-full
MNIST
75 Superpixel MNIST

16 variant names, as the archive lists them.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections