Building benchmarks for models is crucial in data science projects to evaluate performance accurately.A benchmark consists of standardized metrics and simple baseline models for comparison.By comparing models to benchmarks, improvements can be tracked reliably and performance assessed.Creating benchmarks helps in setting clear objectives, enhancing client communication, and aiding in model selection.Benchmarks also assist in detecting model drift, ensuring consistency across datasets, and providing immediate feedback.Defining metrics, setting benchmarks, and running comparisons are key steps in building a benchmark for models.Business-driven metrics like financial gain can be crucial in evaluating model performance for specific use cases.The article provides examples of simple benchmarks like random model, majority model, simple XGB, and simple KNN.Custom benchmarks tailored to specific business needs, such as customer churn scenarios, can also be designed.While benchmarks are valuable, potential drawbacks include non-informative benchmarks, misinterpretation by stakeholders, and overfitting.