Claude Opus 5 vs Inkling Small

Claude Opus 5 leads Inkling Small on coding, 83.0 to 27.3 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Inkling Small costs 20.8x less per output token ($1.20 vs $25.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 82 benchmarks have a result for both.

Replace Claude Opus 5 Replace Inkling Small

Claude Opus 5Anthropic

Coding: 83.0
Overall: 81.6
Output $/M: $25.00

T Inkling SmallThinking Machines

Coding: 27.3
Overall: 43.6
Output $/M: $1.20

vs boards won of 82 shared

Claude Opus 5 or Inkling Small: which to pick

Pick Claude Opus 5 for coding: it scores 83.0 on the Vibe Coding Index against 27.3 for Inkling Small.

Pick Inkling Small for output tokens 20.8x cheaper ($1.20 vs $25.00 per million) and a lower cost per solved task ($0.16 against $1.33).

Model AClaude Opus 5Anthropic83.0/1006 independent benchmarks$1.33 per solved task Model BInkling SmallThinking Machines27.3/1004 independent benchmarks$0.16 per solved task

82492

Shared results: 82
Claude Opus 5 only: 49
Inkling Small only: 2
Like-for-like categories: 7 of 9

Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.

Which one for your work

Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.

Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5 scores 83.0 against 27.3.
6 and 4 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5 leads, 50.8 against 25.7.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5 leads, 56.5 against 23.5.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5 leads, 93.4% against 83.6%.
Same board, both measured
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5 leads, 91.6% against 85.6%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Claude Opus 5 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1309.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
No call
Only Inkling Small has a Vals Index result, 27.6%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Claude Opus 5
Claude Opus 5 takes 1M tokens against 524K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Inkling Small
Claude Opus 5 $0.018, Inkling Small $0.0010 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
Inkling Small
Claude Opus 5 $1.33, Inkling Small $0.16.
Published attempt cost and pass rate

At a glance

Coding index: Claude Opus 5 83.0 from 6 benchmarks, Inkling Small 27.3 from 4 benchmarks.
Widest category: Math, 37.8 points apart on average over 6 shared benchmarks.
Widest single gap: ProofBench: Claude Opus 5 99.0% against Inkling Small 6.0%, 93.0 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price: Claude Opus 5 $25.00 against Inkling Small $1.20 per million output tokens, 20.8x apart.
Context window: Claude Opus 5 takes 1M tokens, Inkling Small 524K.

Benchmark by benchmark

First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.

Boards won, where both have a result
Category	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small
Coding	18	0
Intelligence	2	0
Agentic work	5	0
Reasoning	12	0
Math	6	0
Knowledge	10	1
General	28	0
All shared boards	81	1

CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index180

Coding benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
LiveBench coding	90.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LMArena WebDev	1689	1409	Claude Opus 5
AA Coding Index	78.0	52.9	Claude Opus 5
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)	89.0%	85.9%	Claude Opus 5
SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI)	97.0%	82.2%	Claude Opus 5
Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI)	53.5%	0.0%	Claude Opus 5
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI)	88.4%	19.1%	Claude Opus 5
Code migration (Vals AI)	57.5%	13.7%	Claude Opus 5
ProgramBench (Vals AI)	3.0%	0.5%	Claude Opus 5
IOI (Vals AI)	84.3%	9.3%	Claude Opus 5
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI)	84.6%	55.1%	Claude Opus 5
Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI)	28.5%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
SkillsBench (Vals AI)	60.4%	33.6%	Claude Opus 5
CyberBench (Vals AI)	65.4%	64.1%	Claude Opus 5
SciCode	56.4%	49.7%	Claude Opus 5
FrontierCode	53.4%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
FrontierSWE	52.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
WeirdML	91.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
ALE-Bench	2164.6	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LMArena Text: coding	1533	1450	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: software and IT	1527	1447	Claude Opus 5
LMArena WebDev: React	1711	1399	Claude Opus 5
LMArena WebDev: HTML	1680	1398	Claude Opus 5
LMArena WebDev: from an image	1662	1410	Claude Opus 5
SciCode	13.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 14 boards here

IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20

Intelligence benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
AA Intelligence Index	50.8	25.7	Claude Opus 5
Epoch Capabilities Index	163.9	150.3	Claude Opus 5

Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index50

Agentic work benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
AA Agentic Index	56.5	23.5	Claude Opus 5
Design Arena: agents building web apps	1266	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps	1306	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building mobile apps	1348	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building Android apps	1257	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building Godot games	1279	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: agents building games	1261	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: PowerPoint slides	1240	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LiveBench research	88.9%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LiveBench browser	84.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LiveBench long agentic	62.1%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
SREBench (Vals AI)	12.2%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Finance Agent (Vals AI)	58.6%	41.3%	Claude Opus 5
Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI)	45.5%	15.4%	Claude Opus 5
Legal Research Bench (Vals AI)	55.3%	25.5%	Claude Opus 5
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI)	Not measured	2.9%	Only Inkling Small measured
Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI)	73.6%	31.8%	Claude Opus 5
BioMysteryBench (Vals AI)	79.3%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI)	27.1%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Vals Science Index	47.9%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Time Horizon Index (Vals AI)	18.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
CUA-bench (Vals AI)	9.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
APEX-Agents	65.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
OSWorld 2.0	31.4%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
BALROG	63.4%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
PostTrainBench	35.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Vending-Bench 2	$11,182	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LMArena Search	1242	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here

ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index120

Reasoning benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
GPQA Diamond	93.4%	83.6%	Claude Opus 5
LiveBench reasoning	91.2%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
MysteryMechanism (Vals AI)	37.4%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)	89.9%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)	93.7%	89.5%	Claude Opus 5
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)	54.9%	33.3%	Claude Opus 5
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)	93.9%	88.5%	Claude Opus 5
ARC-AGI	97.5%	84.0%	Claude Opus 5
ARC-AGI-2	90.4%	40.1%	Claude Opus 5
SimpleBench	80.6%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Chess puzzles	43.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Mystery game puzzles	59.0%	6.0%	Claude Opus 5
EBR-bench	45.7%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts	1527	1423	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: expert	1554	1441	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English	1523	1429	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Vision: diagrams	1348	1251	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Vision: homework	1338	1257	Claude Opus 5
Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here

MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index60

Math benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
OTIS Mock AIME	98.9%	90.0%	Claude Opus 5
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3	85.6%	46.3%	Claude Opus 5
FrontierMath, tier 4	73.2%	17.1%	Claude Opus 5
ProofBench	99.0%	6.0%	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: math	1533	1459	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: mathematical work	1544	1441	Claude Opus 5
Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here

KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index101

Knowledge benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
MMLU Pro	91.6%	85.6%	Claude Opus 5
LegalBench (Vals AI)	87.0%	83.0%	Claude Opus 5
CorpFin (Vals AI)	73.2%	69.6%	Claude Opus 5
TaxEval (Vals AI)	75.1%	75.5%	Inkling Small
MortgageTax (Vals AI)	72.1%	62.3%	Claude Opus 5
MedCode (Vals AI)	63.6%	37.9%	Claude Opus 5
SimpleQA Verified	59.9%	19.1%	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: science	1531	1428	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare	1525	1413	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: legal and government	1530	1415	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: business and finance	1501	1413	Claude Opus 5
Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here

Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared

Web design benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
Design Arena: websites	1309	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: UI components	1346	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: game dev	1337	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: data viz	1329	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: 3D	1334	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: all code categories	1323	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: SVG	1311	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Design Arena: ASCII art	1352	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LiveBench design	83.0%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured

GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index280

General benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
Vals Index	Not measured	27.6%	Only Inkling Small measured
LiveBench data analysis	74.6%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI)	76.9%	59.4%	Claude Opus 5
SAGE (Vals AI)	49.4%	32.7%	Claude Opus 5
MedScribe (Vals AI)	91.0%	84.1%	Claude Opus 5
Vals Multimodal Index	73.9%	50.0%	Claude Opus 5
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)	82.0%	75.7%	Claude Opus 5
DTBench	97.9%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LMCA	64.5%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Furniture assembly	60.8%	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
LMArena Text	1509	1413	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: instruction following	1518	1399	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: creative writing	1493	1334	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Vision	1320	1237	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: English	1508	1421	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: non-English	1502	1401	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: Chinese	1573	1464	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: German	1527	1408	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: Japanese	1520	1401	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: Korean	1517	1367	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: French	1519	1435	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: Spanish	1523	1422	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: Russian	1507	1394	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: Polish	1522	1428	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: multi-turn	1500	1416	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: longer queries	1517	1402	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: writing and language	1499	1357	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Text: entertainment and media	1481	1352	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Vision: English	1315	1243	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Vision: Chinese	1400	1292	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Vision: reading text	1329	1243	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Vision: humor	1293	1207	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Vision: creative writing	1313	1205	Claude Opus 5
LMArena Document	1516	Not measured	Only Claude Opus 5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here

Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared

Image generation benchmarks for Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Benchmark	Claude Opus 5	Inkling Small	Leader
Neither model has a result on 5 boards here

What each workload costs

Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.

Chat turn

1K input + 500 output tokens

Claude Opus 5$0.018Fits in one request

Inkling Small$0.0010Fits in one request

Inkling Small costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

Claude Opus 5$0.325Fits in one request

Inkling Small$0.026Fits in one request

Inkling Small costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

Claude Opus 5$1.25Fits in one request

Inkling Small$0.102Fits in one request

Inkling Small costs less

Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.

Specification differences

The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.

Specifications of Claude Opus 5 and Inkling Small
Specification	Anthropic Claude Opus 5	Thinking Machines Inkling Small
Maker	Anthropic	Thinking Machines
Weights	No public weights listed	Open weights
Released	July 24, 2026	July 30, 2026
Context window	1M	524K
Input $/Mtok	$5.00	$0.45
Output $/Mtok	$25.00	$1.20
Coding index	83.0	27.3
Independent measurements behind it	6	4
Cost per solved task	$1.33	$0.16
Source	OpenRouter listing	OpenRouter listing

Questions

Is Claude Opus 5 better than Inkling Small for coding?

Pick Claude Opus 5 for coding: it scores 83.0 on the Vibe Coding Index against 27.3 for Inkling Small. Pick Inkling Small for output tokens 20.8x cheaper ($1.20 vs $25.00 per million) and a lower cost per solved task ($0.16 against $1.33).

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 or Inkling Small?

Claude Opus 5 costs $5.00 per million input tokens and $25.00 per million output tokens; Inkling Small costs $0.45 and $1.20. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Claude Opus 5 costs $1.33 and Inkling Small $0.16.

Which has the bigger context window, Claude Opus 5 or Inkling Small?

Claude Opus 5, with 1M tokens against 524K.

How many benchmarks is the Claude Opus 5 vs Inkling Small comparison based on?

82 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Claude Opus 5's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Inkling Small's on 4. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

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Claude Opus 5 or Inkling Small: which to pick

Which one for your work

Coding

Intelligence

Agentic work

Reasoning

Knowledge

Web design

General

Long documents

Everyday cost

Cost per solved task

At a glance

Benchmark by benchmark

What each workload costs

Chat turn

Repository review

Agent loop

Specification differences

Questions

Compare next