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Rethinking Verbalized Confidence for LLM-as-a-Judge: A Compatibility Shift on Post-2025 Proprietary Models

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 10, 2026 · UTC

Verbalized confidence, long dismissed as overconfident, coarse, and prone to round-number clustering, is now the more robust soft-scoring mechanism for LLM-as-a-Judge on top-tier proprietary models. Across SummEval, AggreFact, and HelpSteer2, spanning up to 18 LLMs, we show that the standard advice to prefer log-probabilities no longer holds on post-2025 models, where verbalized confidence is the better signal. We call this a compatibility shift. On top of a standard verbalized-confidence baseline, we introduce two new ingredients: an overconfidence advisory and self-debate. Together they impr

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