Model comparison
Inkling-Small vs Mercury
Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling-Small scores higher in 6 categories and Mercury in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Inkling-Small leads 38.6 to 17.5.
- Inkling-Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Inkling-Small | Mercury | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 46.5 | 37.6 |
| Released | 2026-07-15 | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 524K | — |
| Max output | 1.05M | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.45 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.20 | — |
| Results tracked | 33 | 9 |
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Category by category
Coding Inkling-Small leads
Inkling-Small: 43.6 (#85), Mercury: 38.7 (#170)
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1451 | 1322 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1409 | — |
| SciCode | 48.7% | — |
Reasoning Inkling-Small leads
Inkling-Small: 38.6 (#63), Mercury: 17.5 (#293)
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1423 | 1285 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 40.1% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 84% | — |
| CritPt | 8.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 18% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 150.15 | — |
Math Not comparable
Inkling-Small: 45.1 (#77), Mercury: —
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 46.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 17.1% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 90% | — |
| ProofBench | 6% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1459 | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Inkling-Small: 48.2 (#77), Mercury: —
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.5% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 19.1% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1442 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Inkling-Small: 39.1 (#62), Mercury: —
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1235 | — |
Multilingual Inkling-Small leads
Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#104), Mercury: 41.6 (#206)
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1402 | 1260 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1465 | — |
| LMArena French | 1436 | — |
| LMArena German | 1405 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1405 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1363 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1391 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1428 | — |
Instruction Following Inkling-Small leads
Inkling-Small: 73.8 (#114), Mercury: 65.2 (#224)
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1399 | 1239 |
Long Context Inkling-Small leads
Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#118), Mercury: 38.4 (#198)
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1401 | 1266 |
Writing & Preference Inkling-Small leads
Inkling-Small: 59.6 (#107), Mercury: 46.2 (#221)
| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1414 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | 1191 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1418 | 1282 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1491 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Inkling-Small better than Mercury?
Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Is Inkling-Small or Mercury better for coding?
Inkling-Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.6 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Inkling-Small and Mercury share?
8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling-Small has 33 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.