Hy4 vs Inkling
Hy4 leads Inkling on coding, 65.2 to 31.6 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Hy4 costs 3.2x less per output token ($1.2505 vs $4.05 per million). Updated November 5, 2026; 6 benchmarks have a result for both.
Hy4 or Inkling: which to pick
Pick Hy4 for coding: it scores 65.2 on the Vibe Coding Index against 31.6 for Inkling, though on 2 benchmarks against 6.
Inkling is neither cheaper nor larger in context, and leads no benchmark both models were measured on.
- Shared results
- 6
- Hy4 only
- 0
- Inkling only
- 102
- Like-for-like categories
- 3 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
Hy4
Hy4 scores 65.2 against 31.6.
2 and 6 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Inkling has a AA Intelligence Index result, 12.5.
Directional only
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Inkling has a AA Agentic Index result, 22.5.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Inkling has a GPQA Diamond result, 87.1%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Inkling has a MMLU Pro result, 86.3%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Inkling has a Design Arena: websites result, 1223.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
Hy4
Hy4 leads, 59.4% against 29.0%.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Hy4
Hy4 takes 1.05M tokens against 524K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Hy4
Hy4 $0.0010, Inkling $0.0030 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Inkling has the number, $0.76.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Hy4 65.2 from 2 benchmarks, Inkling 31.6 from 6 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Coding, 56.8 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): Hy4 81.0% against Inkling 19.2%, 61.8 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Hy4 $1.2505 against Inkling $4.05 per million output tokens, 3.2x apart.
- Context window
- Hy4 takes 1.05M tokens, Inkling 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 | Hy4 | Bars | Inkling | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 2 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 3 | 0 | ||
| General | 1 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 6 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index20
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | Not measured | 64.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev | Not measured | 1415 | Only Inkling measured |
| AA Coding Index | Not measured | 52.1 | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 77.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 39.4% | 0.5% | Hy4 |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 81.0% | 19.2% | Hy4 |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | Not measured | 11.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | Not measured | 14.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 47.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 7.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 26.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 66.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| SciCode | Not measured | 47.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierCode | Not measured | 14.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierSWE | Not measured | 4.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| WeirdML | Not measured | 32.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| ALE-Bench | Not measured | 946.0 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1466 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1466 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | Not measured | 1405 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | Not measured | 1402 | Only Inkling measured |
| SWE-Bench Pro V2 | Not measured | 89.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| GameBench 2 | Not measured | 31.2 | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 25 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | Not measured | 12.5 | Only Inkling measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Not measured | 148.4 | Only Inkling measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | Not measured | 22.5 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | Not measured | 1182 | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench research | Not measured | 59.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench browser | Not measured | 12.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | Not measured | 8.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | Not measured | 46.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 34.4% | 15.3% | Hy4 |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 41.4% | 28.4% | Hy4 |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 12.5% | 3.8% | Hy4 |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 38.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| APEX-Agents | Not measured | 33.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| MCP Atlas | Not measured | 76.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Not measured | 45.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| τ³-Banking | Not measured | 25.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 29 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index14 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 87.1% | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | Not measured | 78.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | Not measured | 78.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 87.2% | Only Inkling measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 31.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | Not measured | 88.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| ARC-AGI | Not measured | 79.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Not measured | 36.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 50.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 21.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1452 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1466 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1448 | Only Inkling measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Scale run) | Not measured | 11.2% | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | Not measured | 88.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 33.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | Not measured | 4.9% | Only Inkling measured |
| ProofBench | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1481 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1462 | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 86.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 83.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 68.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 75.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 64.0% | Only Inkling measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 41.2% | Only Inkling measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | Not measured | 40.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1456 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1449 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1447 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1439 | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | Not measured | 1223 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | Not measured | 1197 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | Not measured | 1165 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | Not measured | 1158 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | Not measured | 1156 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | Not measured | 1204 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | Not measured | 1108 | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | Not measured | 1092 | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench design | Not measured | 58.3% | Only Inkling measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 59.4% | 29.0% | Hy4 |
| LiveBench data analysis | Not measured | 72.8% | Only Inkling measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 58.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Not measured | 49.4% | Only Inkling measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | Not measured | 77.3% | Only Inkling measured |
| DTBench | Not measured | 87.5% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMCA | Not measured | 37.6% | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1443 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1426 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1392 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1442 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1435 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1493 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1441 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1431 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1408 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1461 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | Not measured | 1450 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1434 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1452 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1439 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1436 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1407 | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1396 | Only Inkling measured |
| EQ-Bench 4 | Not measured | 1212 | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 22 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Hy4 | Inkling | 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
Hy4 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Hy4 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Hy4 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 | Tencent Hy4 | Thinking Machines Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Tencent | Thinking Machines |
| Weights | Open weights | Open weights |
| Released | November 4, 2026 | July 17, 2026 |
| Context window | 1.05M | 524K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.417 | $1.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $1.2505 | $4.05 |
| Coding index | 65.2 | 31.6 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 6 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $0.76 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Hy4 better than Inkling for coding?
Pick Hy4 for coding: it scores 65.2 on the Vibe Coding Index against 31.6 for Inkling, though on 2 benchmarks against 6. Inkling is neither cheaper nor larger in context, and leads no benchmark both models were measured on.
Which is cheaper, Hy4 or Inkling?
Hy4 costs $0.417 per million input tokens and $1.2505 per million output tokens; Inkling costs $1.00 and $4.05. Cost per solved task is known for Inkling only.
Which has the bigger context window, Hy4 or Inkling?
Hy4, with 1.05M tokens against 524K.
How many benchmarks is the Hy4 vs Inkling comparison based on?
6 benchmarks have a result for both models as of November 5, 2026. Hy4's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Inkling's on 6. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.