# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Inkling

> Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 44.1 on the Noometry Index. Inkling costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-inkling
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 37

## Summary

- They share 37 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 8 categories and Inkling in 1 category; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 66.1 to 31.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ProofBench: 77% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 0% for Inkling.
- Inkling is cheaper at $1.87 / $4.68 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 66K.
- Inkling has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Noometry Index | 54.5 | 44.1 |
| Rank | 26 | 75 |
| Context | 1M | 66K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $1.87 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $4.68 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#20)
- Inkling: 34.1 (#229)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | 14% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1540 | 1412 |
| SciCode | 53.6% | 47% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | 32.3% |
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1463 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | 946 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| FrontierSWE | — | 4.1% |
| GSO | 37.3% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.7 (#16)
- Inkling: 29.5 (#76)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | 33.8% |
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 25% |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5: 48.2 (#37)
- Inkling: 40.6 (#48)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | 50% |
| CritPt | 16.9% | 5.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | 21% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1452 |
| DTBench | 92.5% | 87.5% |
| LMCA | 50% | 37.6% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.34 | 148.6 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 36.5% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 79.5% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 5: 66.1 (#21)
- Inkling: 31.2 (#198)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | 33.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | 4.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | 88.9% |
| ProofBench | 77% | 0% |
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1482 |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.7 (#42)
- Inkling: 55.2 (#44)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 88.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | 40.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1491 | 1468 |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#26)
- Inkling: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1275 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5: 54.0 (#55)
- Inkling: 54.2 (#49)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1434 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1475 | 1495 |
| LMArena French | 1457 | 1453 |
| LMArena German | 1448 | 1456 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1428 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1401 |
| LMArena Russian | 1452 | 1430 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1436 | 1442 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5: 76.6 (#39)
- Inkling: 75.3 (#65)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1453 | 1427 |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#53)
- Inkling: 43.9 (#79)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1464 | 1436 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5: 69.4 (#24)
- Inkling: 65.5 (#48)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1443 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1390 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | 1611 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | 1226 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1436 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Inkling?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 44.1 on the Noometry Index. Inkling costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Inkling?

Inkling is cheaper. It lists at $1.87 per million input tokens and $4.68 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 or Inkling better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 34.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 66K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and Inkling share?

37 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Inkling has 41.