# Inkling-Small vs StarCoder 2 3B

> Inkling-Small has enough public results to be ranked (#63); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/inkling-small-vs-starcoder-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 1

## Summary

- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Inkling-Small scores higher in 1 category and StarCoder 2 3B in 0 categories; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Inkling-Small leads 43.6 to 33.5.

## Snapshot

| | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 46.5 | 36.3 |
| Rank | 63 | — |
| Context | 524K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.45 | — |
| Output $/M | $1.20 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Inkling-Small: 43.6 (#85)
- StarCoder 2 3B: 33.5

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1409 | — |
| SciCode | 48.7% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1451 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 21.4% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 27.4% |

## Reasoning

- Inkling-Small: 38.6 (#63)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 150.15 | 88.76 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 40.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 84% | — |
| CritPt | 8.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 18% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1423 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 6% | — |
| WinoGrande | — | 57.1% |

## Math

- Inkling-Small: 45.1 (#77)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 46.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 17.1% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 90% | — |
| ProofBench | 6% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1459 | — |
| GSM8K | — | 21.6% |

## Knowledge

- Inkling-Small: 48.2 (#77)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.5% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 19.1% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1442 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 34.2% |
| MMLU | — | 36.6% |

## Multimodal

- Inkling-Small: 39.1 (#62)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1235 | — |

## Multilingual

- Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#104)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1402 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1465 | — |
| LMArena French | 1436 | — |
| LMArena German | 1405 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1405 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1363 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1391 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1428 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Inkling-Small: 73.8 (#114)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1399 | — |

## Long Context

- Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#118)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1401 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Inkling-Small: 59.6 (#107)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1414 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1331 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1491 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1418 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Inkling-Small better than StarCoder 2 3B?

Inkling-Small has enough public results to be ranked (#63); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Inkling-Small or StarCoder 2 3B better for coding?

Inkling-Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.6 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Inkling-Small and StarCoder 2 3B share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Inkling-Small has 33 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 3B has 7.