Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Inkling-Small
Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 44.1 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 32 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 32 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 6 categories and Inkling-Small in 3 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Inkling-Small leads 45.1 to 32.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-2: 13.6% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 40.1% for Inkling-Small.
- Inkling-Small is cheaper at $0.45 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
- Inkling-Small accepts more context: 524K tokens versus 200K.
- Inkling-Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 46.5 |
| Released | 2025-09-29 | 2026-07-15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 200K | 524K |
| Max output | 64K | 1.05M |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.45 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 73 | 33 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.3 (#61), Inkling-Small: 43.6 (#85)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1393 | 1409 |
| SciCode | 44.7% | 48.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1489 | 1451 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 71.3% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 71.4% | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 67% | — |
| GSO | 14.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 47.7% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 796.15 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.52 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.3 (#32), Inkling-Small: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 46.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 73.2% | — |
| GDPval | 42.5% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 2.1% | — |
| τ²-bench Airline | 72% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Retail | 72.4% | — |
| τ²-bench Telecom | 84.9% | — |
| Cybench | 60% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 52.6% | — |
| OSWorld | 62.9% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1159 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 67.4% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 3,839 | — |
Reasoning Inkling-Small leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#125), Inkling-Small: 38.6 (#63)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 13.6% | 40.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 63.7% | 84% |
| CritPt | 1.1% | 8.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 12% | 18% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1462 | 1423 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 17% | 6% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.84 | 150.15 |
| SimpleBench | 54.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 57.9% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 37.3% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 6% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 2.4% | — |
| DTBench | 83.2% | — |
| LMCA | 38.8% | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.9 | — |
Math Inkling-Small leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 32.3 (#216), Inkling-Small: 45.1 (#77)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 23.9% | 46.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | 17.1% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 77.8% | 90% |
| ProofBench | 19% | 6% |
| LMArena Math | 1449 | 1459 |
| Omni-MATH | 55.3% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 97.7% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 15.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |
Knowledge Too close to call
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#76), Inkling-Small: 48.2 (#77)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 82.3% | 88.5% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 30.7% | 19.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1482 | 1442 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 13.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 86.9% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.6% | — |
Multimodal Inkling-Small leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.8 (#89), Inkling-Small: 39.1 (#62)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1235 |
| VPCT | 39.8% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1450 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.4 (#69), Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#104)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1425 | 1402 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1459 | 1465 |
| LMArena French | 1458 | 1436 |
| LMArena German | 1427 | 1405 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1390 | 1405 |
| LMArena Korean | 1403 | 1363 |
| LMArena Russian | 1437 | 1391 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1457 | 1428 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.0 (#78), Inkling-Small: 73.8 (#114)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1459 | 1399 |
| IFEval | 85% | — |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#46), Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#118)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1476 | 1401 |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.5 (#34), Inkling-Small: 59.6 (#107)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1439 | 1414 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1442 | 1331 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1678 | 1491 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1465 | 1418 |
| WildBench | 85.4% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than Inkling-Small?
Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 44.1 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Inkling-Small?
Inkling-Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.45 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Inkling-Small better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.3 versus 43.6 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Inkling-Small does, with 524K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Inkling-Small share?
32 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and Inkling-Small has 33.