# Inkling-Small vs Ministral 3B

> Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 16× 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/inkling-small-vs-ministral-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling-Small scores higher in 3 categories and Ministral 3B in 0 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Inkling-Small leads 48.3 to 10.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 88.5% for Inkling-Small and 25.3% for Ministral 3B.
- Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $0.45 / $1.20 for Inkling-Small.
- Inkling-Small accepts more context: 524K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 46.5 | 25.6 |
| Rank | 57 | 336 |
| Context | 524K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.45 | $0.04 |
| Output $/M | $1.20 | $0.04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Inkling-Small: 43.3 (#80)
- Ministral 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1408 | — |
| SciCode | 48.7% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1451 | — |

## Reasoning

- Inkling-Small: 39.0 (#53)
- Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 150.13 | 118.08 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 40.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 84% | — |
| CritPt | 8.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 18% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1424 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 6% | — |
| DTBench | — | 51.7% |
| LMCA | — | 5.5% |

## Math

- Inkling-Small: 44.9 (#65)
- Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 46.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 17.1% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 90% | — |
| ProofBench | 6% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1453 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 14.4% |

## Knowledge

- Inkling-Small: 48.3 (#71)
- Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.5% | 25.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 19.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1442 | — |

## Multimodal

- Inkling-Small: 38.4 (#59)
- Ministral 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1235 | — |

## Multilingual

- Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#102)
- Ministral 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1400 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1458 | — |
| LMArena French | 1438 | — |
| LMArena German | 1412 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1399 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1355 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1392 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1426 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Inkling-Small: 73.9 (#112)
- Ministral 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1397 | — |

## Long Context

- Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#113)
- Ministral 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1401 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Inkling-Small: 59.8 (#102)
- Ministral 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Ministral 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1413 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1330 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1491 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1420 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Inkling-Small better than Ministral 3B?

Inkling-Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.5 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 16× 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 Ministral 3B?

Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Inkling-Small lists at $0.45 and $1.20.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Inkling-Small does, with 524K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Inkling-Small and Ministral 3B share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling-Small has 33 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 3B has 6.