Model comparison

Inkling-Small vs Qwen2.5 7B Instruct

Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Qwen2.5 7B Instruct costs 2.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling-Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 4 shared benchmarks.

Inkling-Small Thinking Machines Lab

46.5

Rank #63 Confirmed

Qwen2.5 7B Instruct

Alibaba (Qwen)

29.0

Rank #320 Confirmed

Summary

They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling-Small scores higher in 6 categories and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in math, where Inkling-Small leads 45.1 to 12.6.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 90% for Inkling-Small and 2.5% for Qwen2.5 7B Instruct.
Qwen2.5 7B Instruct is cheaper at $0.17 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $0.45 / $1.20 for Inkling-Small.
Inkling-Small accepts more context: 524K tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

Inkling-Small and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct specifications
	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
Provider	Thinking Machines Lab	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	46.5	29.0
Released	2026-07-15	2024-09
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	524K	131K
Max output	1.05M	8K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.45	$0.17
Output $ / M tokens	$1.20	$0.70
Results tracked	33	15

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Category by category

Coding Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 43.6 (#85), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 36.5 (#208)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
LMArena WebDev	1409	—
SciCode	48.7%	—
BigCodeBench Instruct	—	37.6%
LMArena Coding	1451	—
BigCodeBench Complete	—	46.1%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Inkling-Small: —, Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 23.8 (#124)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
BALROG	—	7.8%

Reasoning Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 38.6 (#63), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 14.8 (#322)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
Chess Puzzles	18%	0%
Epoch Capabilities Index	150.15	118.51
ARC-AGI-2	40.1%	—
ARC-AGI-1	84%	—
CritPt	8.3%	—
LMArena Hard Prompts	1423	—
Mystery Game Puzzles	6%	—
DTBench	—	47.7%
LMCA	—	6.4%

Math Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 45.1 (#77), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 12.6 (#306)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	90%	2.5%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	46.3%	—
FrontierMath Tier 4	17.1%	—
ProofBench	6%	—
Omni-MATH	—	29.4%
LMArena Math	1459	—

Knowledge Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 48.2 (#77), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 17.0 (#286)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
GPQA Diamond	88.5%	35.5%
SimpleQA Verified	19.1%	—
MMLU-Pro	—	53.9%
GPQA (HELM)	—	34.1%
LMArena Expert	1442	—
MMLU	—	72.9%

Multimodal Not comparable

Inkling-Small: 39.1 (#62), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
LMArena Vision	1235	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#104), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
LMArena Non-English	1402	—
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), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 63.2 (#231)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
IFEval	—	74.1%
LMArena Instruction Following	1399	—

Long Context Not comparable

Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#118), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
LMArena Longer Query	1401	—

Writing & Preference Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 59.6 (#107), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 48.8 (#195)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Inkling-Small	Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
LMArena Text	1414	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1331	—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	1491	—
WildBench	—	73.1%
LMArena Multi-Turn	1418	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Inkling-Small better than Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?

Which is cheaper, Inkling-Small or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?

Qwen2.5 7B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.17 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Inkling-Small lists at $0.45 and $1.20.

Is Inkling-Small or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct better for coding?

Inkling-Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.6 versus 36.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Inkling-Small does, with 524K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Inkling-Small and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling-Small has 33 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct has 15.