# Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite vs Inkling-Small

> Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 37.0 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite costs 3.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling-Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-2-5-flash-lite-vs-inkling-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 19

## Summary

- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher in 0 categories and Inkling-Small in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Inkling-Small leads 38.6 to 22.2.
- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.40 per million input/output tokens, against $0.45 / $1.20 for Inkling-Small.
- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 524K.
- Inkling-Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Noometry Index | 37.0 | 46.5 |
| Rank | 211 | 63 |
| Context | 1.05M | 524K |
| Input $/M | $0.10 | $0.45 |
| Output $/M | $0.40 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 38.5 (#173)
- Inkling-Small: 43.6 (#85)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1373 | 1451 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1409 |
| SciCode | — | 48.7% |
| WeirdML | 35.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 325.9 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 28.0 (#96)
- Inkling-Small: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 36.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 22.2 (#205)
- Inkling-Small: 38.6 (#63)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1377 | 1423 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.94 | 150.15 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 40.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 40.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 84% |
| CritPt | — | 8.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 18% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 6% |
| DTBench | 62.8% | — |
| LMCA | 18.1% | — |

## Math

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 38.0 (#144)
- Inkling-Small: 45.1 (#77)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1373 | 1459 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 46.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 17.1% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 90% |
| ProofBench | — | 6% |
| Omni-MATH | 48% | — |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 32.5 (#210)
- Inkling-Small: 48.2 (#77)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1373 | 1442 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 88.5% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 19.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | 53.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 3.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.9% | — |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 29.1 (#114)
- Inkling-Small: 39.1 (#62)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1198 | 1235 |
| VPCT | 30% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 49.3 (#134)
- Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#104)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1369 | 1402 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1404 | 1465 |
| LMArena French | 1388 | 1436 |
| LMArena German | 1389 | 1405 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1359 | 1405 |
| LMArena Korean | 1360 | 1363 |
| LMArena Russian | 1373 | 1391 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1396 | 1428 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 70.0 (#168)
- Inkling-Small: 73.8 (#114)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1367 | 1399 |
| IFEval | 81% | — |

## Long Context

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 33.3 (#262)
- Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#118)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1373 | 1401 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 47.2% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 56.8 (#135)
- Inkling-Small: 59.6 (#107)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1379 | 1414 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1367 | 1331 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1366 | 1418 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1491 |
| WildBench | 81.8% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite better than Inkling-Small?

Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 37.0 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite costs 3.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling-Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Inkling-Small?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens; Inkling-Small lists at $0.45 and $1.20.

### Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Inkling-Small better for coding?

Inkling-Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.6 versus 38.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 524K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and Inkling-Small share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite has 33 scored results on Noometry and Inkling-Small has 33.