Model comparison

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Inkling-Small

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 46.5 on the Noometry Index. Inkling-Small costs 16× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 31 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4.6 Anthropic

58.2

Rank #20 Confirmed

Inkling-Small Thinking Machines Lab

46.5

Rank #63 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 31 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Inkling-Small in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 57.8 to 38.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is ProofBench: 50% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 6% for Inkling-Small.
  • Inkling-Small is cheaper at $0.45 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
  • Claude Opus 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 524K.
  • Inkling-Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4.6 and Inkling-Small specifications
Claude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
ProviderAnthropicThinking Machines Lab
Noometry Index58.246.5
Released2026-02-042026-07-15
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M524K
Max output128K1.05M
Input $ / M tokens$5$0.45
Output $ / M tokens$25$1.20
Results tracked6833

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Inkling-Small: 43.6 (#85)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
LMArena WebDev15471409
LMArena Coding15361451
SWE-bench Verified78.7%—
FrontierCode26.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)75.6%—
SWE-bench Multilingual72%—
SciCode—48.7%
GSO41.2%—
WeirdML78%—
ALE-Bench996.5—
AlgoTune1.47—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Inkling-Small: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
Terminal-Bench79.8%—
APEX-Agents46.3%—
Remote Labor Index4.2%—
τ²-bench Banking27.3%—
Cybench93%—
DeepResearch Bench55.3%—
GBAEval44.1%—
LMArena Search1253—
METR Time Horizons78.9%—
Vending-Bench 28,018—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Inkling-Small: 38.6 (#63)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
ARC-AGI-269.2%40.1%
ARC-AGI-194%84%
Chess Puzzles17%18%
LMArena Hard Prompts15271423
Mystery Game Puzzles25%6%
Epoch Capabilities Index155.24150.15
SimpleBench67.6%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark83.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)92.1%—
CritPt—8.3%
EnigmaEval7.6%—
Thematic Generalization80.6%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
DTBench91.2%—
LMCA55.8%—
ForecastBench60—

Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Inkling-Small: 45.1 (#77)

Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Inkling-Small: 48.2 (#77)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
GPQA Diamond90.5%88.5%
SimpleQA Verified47%19.1%
LMArena Expert15461442
Humanity's Last Exam34.4%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.2%—

Multimodal Inkling-Small leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Inkling-Small: 39.1 (#62)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
LMArena Vision13161235
Furniture Assembly28.3%—
LMArena Document1507—

Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#104)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
LMArena Non-English14891402
LMArena Chinese15511465
LMArena French15131436
LMArena German15021405
LMArena Japanese14841405
LMArena Korean14641363
LMArena Russian14971391
LMArena Spanish15101428

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Inkling-Small: 73.8 (#114)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
LMArena Instruction Following15231399

Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#118)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
LMArena Longer Query15201401
CL-bench20.7%—
CL-bench Life17%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads

Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Inkling-Small: 59.6 (#107)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4.6Inkling-Small
LMArena Text15031414
LMArena Creative Writing15051331
EQ-Bench Creative Writing18091491
LMArena Multi-Turn15131418
EQ-Bench 41223—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Inkling-Small?

Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 46.5 on the Noometry Index. Inkling-Small costs 16× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Inkling-Small?

Inkling-Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.45 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.

Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Inkling-Small better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 43.6 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 524K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Inkling-Small share?

31 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Inkling-Small has 33.

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