Model comparison
Inkling vs Mistral Small
Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 9.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 24 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 24 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling scores higher in 9 categories and Mistral Small in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Inkling leads 55.1 to 31.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 88.9% for Inkling and 5.8% for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $1.87 / $4.68 for Inkling.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 66K.
Side by side
| Inkling | Mistral Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 33.4 |
| Released | 2026-07-15 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 66K | 262K |
| Max output | 66K | 256K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.87 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $4.68 | $0.60 |
| Results tracked | 41 | 39 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Inkling: 34.5 (#234), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 47% | 26.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1464 | 1362 |
| ALE-Bench | 946 | 497.62 |
| FrontierCode | 14% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1413 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 4.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 32.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
Agentic & Tool Use Inkling leads
Inkling: 29.6 (#85), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25% | — |
Reasoning Inkling leads
Inkling: 40.4 (#56), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 5.4% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1451 | 1335 |
| DTBench | 87.5% | 70.9% |
| LMCA | 37.6% | 20.6% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 36.5% | — |
| SimpleBench | 50% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 79.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 21% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.54 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |
Math Inkling leads
Inkling: 31.3 (#225), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | 5.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1479 | 1341 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 33.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 4.9% | — |
| ProofBench | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |
Knowledge Inkling leads
Inkling: 55.1 (#49), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.3% | 47.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1465 | 1291 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Inkling: —, Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |
Multilingual Inkling leads
Inkling: 54.0 (#52), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1434 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1490 | 1340 |
| LMArena French | 1458 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1446 | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1429 | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | 1404 | 1259 |
| LMArena Russian | 1429 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1448 | 1346 |
Instruction Following Inkling leads
Inkling: 75.1 (#71), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1426 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
Long Context Inkling leads
Inkling: 43.8 (#86), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1434 | 1327 |
Writing & Preference Inkling leads
Inkling: 65.2 (#51), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1441 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1387 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1436 | 1344 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1611 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1226 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Inkling better than Mistral Small?
Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 9.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Inkling or Mistral Small?
Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Inkling lists at $1.87 and $4.68.
Is Inkling or Mistral Small better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (34.5 vs 34.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Small does, with 262K tokens against 66K.
How many benchmarks do Inkling and Mistral Small share?
24 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling has 41 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.