o3 vs Inkling Small
Inkling Small leads o3 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 25.7 to 20.2, and Inkling Small costs 6.7x less per output token ($1.20 vs $8.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 58 benchmarks have a result for both.
o3 or Inkling Small: which to pick
Only Inkling Small has a coding score, 27.3 on the Vibe Coding Index; o3 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick o3 for work measured by GPQA Diamond or Mystery game puzzles, where it leads.
- Shared results
- 58
- o3 only
- 44
- Inkling Small only
- 26
- Like-for-like categories
- 6 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
No call
Only Inkling Small has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Inkling Small
Inkling Small leads, 25.7 against 20.2.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Inkling Small has a AA Agentic Index result, 23.5.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
o3
o3 leads, 84.1% against 83.6%.
Same board, both measured
Math
AIME
No call
Only o3 has a AIME result, 85.3%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
o3
o3 leads, 85.6% against 85.6%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only o3 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1036.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
No call
Only Inkling Small has a Vals Index result, 27.6%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Inkling Small
Inkling Small takes 524K tokens against 200K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Inkling Small
o3 $0.0060, Inkling Small $0.0010 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
Inkling Small
o3 $0.571, Inkling Small $0.16.
Published attempt cost and pass rate
At a glance
- Coding index
- o3 not benchmarked, Inkling Small 27.3 from 4 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Reasoning, 10.8 points apart on average over 12 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- ARC-AGI-2: o3 6.5% against Inkling Small 40.1%, 33.6 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- o3 $8.00 against Inkling Small $1.20 per million output tokens, 6.7x apart.
- Context window
- o3 takes 200K 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.
| Category | o3 | Bars | Inkling Small | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 0 | 3 | ||
| Intelligence | 0 | 2 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 10 | ||
| Math | 0 | 4 | ||
| Knowledge | 8 | 3 | ||
| General | 11 | 15 | ||
| All shared boards | 21 | 37 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index03
| Benchmark | o3 | Inkling Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | 81.3% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified | 58.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | 36.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | Not measured | 1409 | Only Inkling Small measured |
| AA Coding Index | Not measured | 52.9 | Only Inkling Small measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 83.9% | 85.9% | Inkling Small |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 82.2% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 19.1% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | Not measured | 13.7% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.5% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | Not measured | 9.3% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 55.1% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 33.6% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 64.1% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 80.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| SciCode | Not measured | 49.7% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 37.1% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| GSO-Bench | 8.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| WeirdML | 52.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 933.5 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1407 | 1450 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1415 | 1447 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena WebDev: React | Not measured | 1399 | Only Inkling Small measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | Not measured | 1398 | Only Inkling Small measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | Not measured | 1410 | Only Inkling Small measured |
| SciCode | 9.2% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | o3 | Inkling Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 20.2 | 25.7 | Inkling Small |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.7 | 150.3 | Inkling Small |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index13 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | o3 | Inkling Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | Not measured | 23.5 | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | Not measured | 41.3% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 15.4% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 25.5% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 2.9% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 31.8% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 80.7% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| METR time horizons | 65.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| GDPval | 30.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | 45.2% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| OSWorld | 23.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) | 63.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| BrowseComp-Plus | 65.9% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 28 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index210
| Benchmark | o3 | Inkling Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 84.1% | 83.6% | o3 |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 80.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 82.7% | 89.5% | Inkling Small |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 20.1% | 33.3% | Inkling Small |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 81.8% | 88.5% | Inkling Small |
| ARC-AGI | 60.8% | 84.0% | Inkling Small |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 6.5% | 40.1% | Inkling Small |
| SimpleBench | 53.1% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 37.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 29.0% | 6.0% | o3 |
| VPCT | 52.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1402 | 1423 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1402 | 1441 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1411 | 1429 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1220 | 1251 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1234 | 1257 | Inkling Small |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 67.6% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index04
| Benchmark | o3 | Inkling Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 85.3% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | 94.6% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | 91.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| AA Math Index | 88.3 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 88.3% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 84.4% | 90.0% | Inkling Small |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 33.3% | 46.3% | Inkling Small |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | Not measured | 17.1% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| ProofBench | Not measured | 6.0% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| MATH level 5 | 97.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1426 | 1459 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1423 | 1441 | Inkling Small |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index83
| Benchmark | o3 | Inkling Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 85.6% | 85.6% | o3 |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 83.8% | 83.0% | o3 |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 59.7% | 69.6% | Inkling Small |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 74.6% | 75.5% | Inkling Small |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 65.7% | 62.3% | o3 |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 96.1% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 47.3% | 37.9% | o3 |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 85.3% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 49.4% | 19.1% | o3 |
| GeoBench | 74.0% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1429 | 1428 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1448 | 1413 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1428 | 1415 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1393 | 1413 | Inkling Small |
| FACTS Benchmark Suite | 44.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index5 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | o3 | Inkling Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1036 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1017 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1034 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1200 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1020 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index1115
| Benchmark | o3 | Inkling Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | Not measured | 27.6% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 59.4% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 41.8% | 32.7% | o3 |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 76.7% | 84.1% | Inkling Small |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Not measured | 50.0% | Only Inkling Small measured |
| IFBench | 71.4% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 74.7% | 75.7% | Inkling Small |
| DTBench | 84.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMCA | 39.7% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 88.9% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | 83.9% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| CL-bench | 17.8% | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1410 | 1413 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1368 | 1399 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1359 | 1334 | o3 |
| LMArena Vision | 1214 | 1237 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: English | 1417 | 1421 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1401 | 1401 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1437 | 1464 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: German | 1420 | 1408 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1403 | 1401 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1370 | 1367 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: French | 1430 | 1435 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1395 | 1422 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1406 | 1394 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1438 | 1428 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1405 | 1416 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1372 | 1402 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1372 | 1357 | o3 |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1373 | 1352 | o3 |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1221 | 1243 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1237 | 1292 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1218 | 1243 | Inkling Small |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1222 | 1207 | o3 |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | 1210 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1234 | Not measured | Only o3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1201 | 1205 | Inkling Small |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | o3 | 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
Inkling Small costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Inkling Small costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
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.
| Specification | OpenAI o3 | Thinking Machines Inkling Small |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | Thinking Machines |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | April 16, 2025 | July 30, 2026 |
| Context window | 200K | 524K |
| Input $/Mtok | $2.00 | $0.45 |
| Output $/Mtok | $8.00 | $1.20 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | 27.3 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 4 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.571 | $0.16 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is o3 better than Inkling Small for coding?
Only Inkling Small has a coding score, 27.3 on the Vibe Coding Index; o3 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick o3 for work measured by GPQA Diamond or Mystery game puzzles, where it leads.
Which is cheaper, o3 or Inkling Small?
o3 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $8.00 per million output tokens; Inkling Small costs $0.45 and $1.20. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, o3 costs $0.571 and Inkling Small $0.16.
Which has the bigger context window, o3 or Inkling Small?
Inkling Small, with 524K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks is the o3 vs Inkling Small comparison based on?
58 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. o3's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Inkling Small's on 4. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.