Inkling vs Inkling 2 Small
Inkling 2 Small leads Inkling on coding, 48.9 to 29.2 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Inkling 2 Small costs 4.0x less per output token ($1.00 vs $4.05 per million). Updated November 14, 2026; 44 benchmarks have a result for both.
Inkling or Inkling 2 Small: which to pick
Pick Inkling 2 Small for coding: it scores 48.9 on the Vibe Coding Index against 29.2 for Inkling, though on 3 benchmarks against 6.
Pick Inkling for work measured by LMArena Text: coding or LMArena Text: software and IT, where it leads.
- Shared results
- 44
- Inkling only
- 71
- Inkling 2 Small only
- 7
- 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
Inkling 2 Small
Inkling 2 Small scores 48.9 against 29.2.
6 and 3 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Inkling 2 Small
Inkling 2 Small leads, 30.6 against 12.5.
Same board, both measured
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, 1215.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
Inkling 2 Small
Inkling 2 Small leads, 56.1% against 29.0%.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Inkling 2 Small
Inkling 2 Small takes 1.05M tokens against 524K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Inkling 2 Small
Inkling $0.0030, Inkling 2 Small $0.0008 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
- Inkling 29.2 from 6 benchmarks, Inkling 2 Small 48.9 from 3 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Coding, 18.2 points apart on average over 13 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): Inkling 19.2% against Inkling 2 Small 81.5%, 62.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Inkling $4.05 against Inkling 2 Small $1.00 per million output tokens, 4.0x apart.
- Context window
- Inkling takes 524K tokens, Inkling 2 Small 1.05M.
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 | Inkling | Bars | Inkling 2 Small | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 2 | 11 | ||
| Intelligence | 0 | 1 | ||
| Agentic work | 0 | 6 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 6 | ||
| Knowledge | 2 | 1 | ||
| General | 10 | 3 | ||
| All shared boards | 16 | 28 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index211
| Benchmark | Inkling | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 48.7% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1414 | 1647 | Inkling 2 Small |
| AA Coding Index | 52.1 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 85.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 77.6% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 0.5% | 12.6% | Inkling 2 Small |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 19.2% | 81.5% | Inkling 2 Small |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 11.8% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | 0.5% | Inkling 2 Small |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 14.9% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 47.6% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| SWE-bench Multimodal (Vals AI) | Not measured | 43.1% | Only Inkling 2 Small measured |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI) | 7.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | 26.1% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | 66.8% | 72.7% | Inkling 2 Small |
| SciCode | 47.0% | 52.3% | Inkling 2 Small |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Artificial Analysis run) | 1.0% | 13.1% | Inkling 2 Small |
| FrontierCode 2.0 | 3.9% | 25.4% | Inkling 2 Small |
| FrontierCode | 14.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierSWE | 4.1% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| WeirdML | 32.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| ALE-Bench | 946.0 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1467 | 1455 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1467 | 1443 | Inkling |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1404 | 1660 | Inkling 2 Small |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1404 | 1661 | Inkling 2 Small |
| SWE-Bench Pro V2 | 89.9% | 97.7% | Inkling 2 Small |
| GameBench 2 | 31.3 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 23 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Inkling | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 12.5 | 30.6 | Inkling 2 Small |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.4 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index06
| Benchmark | Inkling | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 22.5 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1172 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench research | 60.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench browser | 12.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 9.8% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | 1.9% | Inkling 2 Small |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 46.6% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 15.3% | 38.9% | Inkling 2 Small |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 28.4% | 46.6% | Inkling 2 Small |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 3.8% | 21.7% | Inkling 2 Small |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 38.4% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| BioMysteryBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 70.0% | Only Inkling 2 Small measured |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | Not measured | 2.9% | Only Inkling 2 Small measured |
| Vals Science Index | Not measured | 32.7% | Only Inkling 2 Small measured |
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | 46.8% | Inkling 2 Small |
| MCP Atlas | 76.0% | 85.4% | Inkling 2 Small |
| Toolathlon-Verified | 45.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| τ³-Banking | 25.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 26 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index26
| Benchmark | Inkling | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.1% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | 78.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| MysteryMechanism (Vals AI) | Not measured | 25.2% | Only Inkling 2 Small measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 78.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 87.2% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 31.9% | 44.1% | Inkling 2 Small |
| HLE-Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 10.6% | 28.7% | Inkling 2 Small |
| CritPt v2, hard subset (Artificial Analysis run) | 18.0% | 35.0% | Inkling 2 Small |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 88.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| ARC-AGI | 79.5% | 96.5% | Inkling 2 Small |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 36.5% | 81.7% | Inkling 2 Small |
| SimpleBench | 50.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Chess puzzles | 21.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1453 | 1421 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1469 | 1478 | Inkling 2 Small |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1449 | 1424 | Inkling |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Scale run) | 11.2% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Inkling | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | 88.9% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 33.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 4.9% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| ProofBench | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1481 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1466 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| MathArena | Not measured | 42.4% | Only Inkling 2 Small measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index21
| Benchmark | Inkling | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 86.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 83.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 68.6% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 75.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 64.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 41.2% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| AA-Omniscience | -1.5 | 16.1 | Inkling 2 Small |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1459 | 1409 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1450 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1448 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1439 | 1415 | Inkling |
| 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 | Inkling | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1215 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1189 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1152 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1158 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1141 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1194 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1101 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1088 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench design | 55.2% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index103
| Benchmark | Inkling | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 29.0% | 56.1% | Inkling 2 Small |
| LiveBench data analysis | 72.8% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 58.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 88.6% | Only Inkling 2 Small measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 85.4% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 49.4% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 77.3% | 83.3% | Inkling 2 Small |
| GDPval-AA | 1080 | 1630 | Inkling 2 Small |
| DTBench | 87.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMCA | 37.6% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1403 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1427 | 1408 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1395 | 1348 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: English | 1443 | 1418 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1436 | 1390 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1494 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1440 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1438 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1413 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1463 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1451 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1435 | 1377 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1451 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1442 | 1408 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1437 | 1403 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1410 | 1381 | Inkling |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1398 | 1359 | Inkling |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1212 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 21 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Inkling | Inkling 2 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 2 Small costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Inkling 2 Small costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Inkling 2 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 | Thinking Machines Inkling | Thinking Machines Inkling 2 Small |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Thinking Machines | Thinking Machines |
| Weights | Open weights | Open weights |
| Released | July 17, 2026 | November 9, 2026 |
| Context window | 524K | 1.05M |
| Input $/Mtok | $1.00 | $0.30 |
| Output $/Mtok | $4.05 | $1.00 |
| Coding index | 29.2 | 48.9 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 6 | 3 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.76 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Inkling better than Inkling 2 Small for coding?
Pick Inkling 2 Small for coding: it scores 48.9 on the Vibe Coding Index against 29.2 for Inkling, though on 3 benchmarks against 6. Pick Inkling for work measured by LMArena Text: coding or LMArena Text: software and IT, where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Inkling or Inkling 2 Small?
Inkling costs $1.00 per million input tokens and $4.05 per million output tokens; Inkling 2 Small costs $0.30 and $1.00. Cost per solved task is known for Inkling only.
Which has the bigger context window, Inkling or Inkling 2 Small?
Inkling 2 Small, with 1.05M tokens against 524K.
How many benchmarks is the Inkling vs Inkling 2 Small comparison based on?
44 benchmarks have a result for both models as of November 14, 2026. Inkling's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Inkling 2 Small's on 3. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.