Model comparison

Inkling vs o3-mini

Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 32 shared benchmarks.

Inkling Thinking Machines Lab

44.1

Rank #80 Confirmed

o3-mini OpenAI

36.7

Rank #212 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 32 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling scores higher in 7 categories and o3-mini in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Inkling leads 40.4 to 16.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-1: 79.5% for Inkling and 34.5% for o3-mini.
  • o3-mini is cheaper at $1.10 / $4.40 per million input/output tokens, against $1.87 / $4.68 for Inkling.
  • o3-mini accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 66K.
  • Inkling has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Inkling and o3-mini specifications
Inklingo3-mini
ProviderThinking Machines LabOpenAI
Noometry Index44.136.7
Released2026-07-152024-12-20
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window66K200K
Max output66K100K
Input $ / M tokens$1.87$1.10
Output $ / M tokens$4.68$4.40
Results tracked4151

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Category by category

Coding o3-mini leads

Inkling: 34.5 (#234), o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkInklingo3-mini
SciCode47%39.8%
WeirdML32.3%43.7%
LMArena Coding14641378
FrontierCode14%—
Aider Polyglot—60.4%
LMArena WebDev1413—
FrontierSWE4.1%—
GSO—1.3%
LiveBench Coding—82.7%
CadEval—54%
ALE-Bench946—

Agentic & Tool Use Too close to call

Inkling: 29.6 (#85), o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkInklingo3-mini
APEX-Agents33.8%—
τ²-bench Banking25%—
Cybench—22.5%

Reasoning Inkling leads

Inkling: 40.4 (#56), o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkInklingo3-mini
ARC-AGI-236.5%3%
SimpleBench50%22.8%
ARC-AGI-179.5%34.5%
CritPt5.4%0.3%
Chess Puzzles21%17%
LMArena Hard Prompts14511366
DTBench87.5%68.8%
LMCA37.6%19%
Epoch Capabilities Index148.54140.34
LiveBench Reasoning—89.6%
Mystery Game Puzzles—7%
LiveBench Data Analysis—70.6%
ForecastBench—59.6
LiveBench—75.9%

Math Inkling leads

Inkling: 31.3 (#225), o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)

Knowledge Inkling leads

Inkling: 55.1 (#49), o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkInklingo3-mini
GPQA Diamond88.3%77%
SimpleQA Verified40.3%15.3%
LMArena Expert14651364
Confabulations—17.9%

Multilingual Inkling leads

Inkling: 54.0 (#52), o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkInklingo3-mini
LMArena Non-English14341319
LMArena Chinese14901379
LMArena French14581334
LMArena German14461303
LMArena Japanese14291286
LMArena Korean14041314
LMArena Russian14291304
LMArena Spanish14481321

Instruction Following Too close to call

Inkling: 75.1 (#71), o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkInklingo3-mini
LMArena Instruction Following14261337
LiveBench Instruction Following—84.4%

Long Context Inkling leads

Inkling: 43.8 (#86), o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkInklingo3-mini
LMArena Longer Query14341343
Fiction.LiveBench—50%

Writing & Preference Inkling leads

Inkling: 65.2 (#51), o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkInklingo3-mini
LMArena Text14411337
LMArena Creative Writing13871286
LMArena Multi-Turn14361320
Short-Story Creative Writing—61.7%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1611—
EQ-Bench 41226—
LiveBench Language—50.7%

Frequently asked questions

Is Inkling better than o3-mini?

Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Inkling or o3-mini?

o3-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; Inkling lists at $1.87 and $4.68.

Is Inkling or o3-mini better for coding?

o3-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

o3-mini does, with 200K tokens against 66K.

How many benchmarks do Inkling and o3-mini share?

32 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling has 41 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.

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