Noometry

Model comparison

Inkling-Small vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-30B-A3B costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling-Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 23 shared benchmarks.

Inkling-Small Thinking Machines Lab

46.5

Rank #57 Confirmed

Qwen3-30B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

38.5

Rank #174 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling-Small scores higher in 8 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Inkling-Small leads 39.0 to 21.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 90% for Inkling-Small and 70.3% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
  • Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.45 / $1.20 for Inkling-Small.
  • Inkling-Small accepts more context: 524K tokens versus 41K.

Side by side

Inkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
ProviderThinking Machines LabAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index46.538.5
Released2026-07-152025-04-28
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window524K41K
Max output1.05M16K
Input $ / M tokens$0.45$0.12
Output $ / M tokens$1.20$0.50
Results tracked3332

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Category by category

Coding Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 43.3 (#80), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.0 (#188)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
SciCode48.7%33.3%
LMArena Coding14511416
LMArena WebDev1408—
WeirdML—29.8%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Inkling-Small: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.5 (#75)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—41.4%

Reasoning Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 39.0 (#53), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 21.6 (#193)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
CritPt8.3%0.3%
Chess Puzzles18%8%
LMArena Hard Prompts14241398
Epoch Capabilities Index150.13139.63
ARC-AGI-240.1%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—54.9%
ARC-AGI-184%—
Mystery Game Puzzles6%—
DTBench—69.3%
LMCA—22.4%

Math Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 44.9 (#65), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 36.0 (#133)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202590%70.3%
LMArena Math14531394
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)46.3%—
FrontierMath Tier 417.1%—
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—47.8%
ProofBench6%—

Knowledge Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 48.3 (#71), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.7 (#96)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
GPQA Diamond88.5%70.1%
LMArena Expert14421395
SimpleQA Verified19.1%—
Confabulations—12.3%

Multimodal Not comparable

Inkling-Small: 38.4 (#59), Qwen3-30B-A3B: —

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Vision1235—

Multilingual Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#102), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.8 (#126)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Non-English14001372
LMArena Chinese14581434
LMArena French14381419
LMArena German14121379
LMArena Japanese13991338
LMArena Korean13551333
LMArena Russian13921369
LMArena Spanish14261403

Instruction Following Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 73.9 (#112), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.2 (#137)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following13971364

Long Context Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#113), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#278)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query14011379
Fiction.LiveBench—40.6%

Writing & Preference Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 59.8 (#102), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.9 (#138)

BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Text14131384
LMArena Creative Writing13301318
LMArena Multi-Turn14201378
Short-Story Creative Writing—75.3%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1491—

Frequently asked questions

Is Inkling-Small better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3-30B-A3B costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling-Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Inkling-Small or Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; Inkling-Small lists at $0.45 and $1.20.

Is Inkling-Small or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?

Inkling-Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.3 versus 37.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Inkling-Small does, with 524K tokens against 41K.

How many benchmarks do Inkling-Small and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling-Small has 33 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.

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