Inkling vs Solar Mini 4
Inkling leads Solar Mini 4 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 25.0 to 24.1, and Solar Mini 4 costs 20.2x less per output token ($0.20 vs $4.05 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 7 benchmarks have a result for both.
Inkling or Solar Mini 4: which to pick
Only Inkling has a coding score, 31.5 on the Vibe Coding Index; Solar Mini 4 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Solar Mini 4 for output tokens 20.2x cheaper ($0.20 vs $4.05 per million) and work measured by SciCode or Long context reasoning (AA-LCR), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 7
- Inkling only
- 95
- Solar Mini 4 only
- 0
- Like-for-like categories
- 5 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 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Inkling
Inkling leads, 25.0 against 24.1.
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
Inkling
Inkling leads, 1224 against 1158.
Same board, both measured
General
Vals Index
No call
Only Inkling has a Vals Index result, 29.0%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
No call
Both take 524K tokens.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Solar Mini 4
Inkling $0.0030, Solar Mini 4 $0.0001 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 31.5 from 6 benchmarks, Solar Mini 4 not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Web design, 7.5 points apart on average over 3 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Design Arena: websites: Inkling 1224 against Solar Mini 4 1158, 8.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Inkling $4.05 against Solar Mini 4 $0.20 per million output tokens, 20.2x apart.
- Context window
- Both take 524K tokens.
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 | Solar Mini 4 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 0 | 1 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 1 | 0 | ||
| Web design | 3 | 0 | ||
| General | 0 | 1 | ||
| All shared boards | 5 | 2 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index01
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 64.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1414 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| 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% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 19.2% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 11.8% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 14.9% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 47.6% | Not measured | Only Inkling 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% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| SciCode | 47.0% | 47.6% | Solar Mini 4 |
| 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 | 1466 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1465 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1404 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1399 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 16 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 25.0 | 24.1 | Inkling |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.4 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 22.5 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1196 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench research | 59.9% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench browser | 16.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 14.1% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 46.6% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 15.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 28.4% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 3.8% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 38.4% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 29 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.1% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | 78.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling 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% | 25.8% | Inkling |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 88.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| ARC-AGI | 79.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 36.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| SimpleBench | 50.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Chess puzzles | 21.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1451 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1466 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1448 | 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 index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | 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 | 1479 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1460 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | 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 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1455 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1447 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1448 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1438 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1224 | 1158 | Inkling |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1198 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1165 | 1106 | Inkling |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1156 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1160 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1205 | 1150 | Inkling |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1108 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1089 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LiveBench design | 58.3% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 29.0% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| 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) | 36.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling 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% | Solar Mini 4 |
| DTBench | 87.5% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMCA | 37.6% | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text | 1442 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1425 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1390 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1442 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1434 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1493 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1445 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1429 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1403 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1455 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1449 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1430 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1450 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1437 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1435 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1404 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1394 | Not measured | Only Inkling measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 20 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Inkling | Solar Mini 4 | 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
Solar Mini 4 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Solar Mini 4 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Solar Mini 4 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 | Upstage Solar Mini 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Thinking Machines | Upstage |
| Weights | Open weights | No public weights listed |
| Released | July 17, 2026 | September 23, 2026 |
| Context window | 524K | 524K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.975 | $0.05 |
| Output $/Mtok | $4.05 | $0.20 |
| Coding index | 31.5 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 6 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.76 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Inkling better than Solar Mini 4 for coding?
Only Inkling has a coding score, 31.5 on the Vibe Coding Index; Solar Mini 4 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Solar Mini 4 for output tokens 20.2x cheaper ($0.20 vs $4.05 per million) and work measured by SciCode or Long context reasoning (AA-LCR), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Inkling or Solar Mini 4?
Inkling costs $0.975 per million input tokens and $4.05 per million output tokens; Solar Mini 4 costs $0.05 and $0.20. Cost per solved task is known for Inkling only.
Which has the bigger context window, Inkling or Solar Mini 4?
Neither: both take 524K tokens.
How many benchmarks is the Inkling vs Solar Mini 4 comparison based on?
7 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Inkling's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Solar Mini 4's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.