# Inkling vs Ministral 8B

> Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 26× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/inkling-vs-ministral-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 14

## Summary

- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling scores higher in 8 categories and Ministral 8B in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Inkling leads 55.2 to 12.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 88.3% for Inkling and 27.1% for Ministral 8B.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.10 per million input/output tokens, against $1.87 / $4.68 for Inkling.
- Ministral 8B accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 66K.

## Snapshot

| | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 27.8 |
| Rank | 75 | 321 |
| Context | 66K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $1.87 | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | $4.68 | $0.10 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Inkling: 34.1 (#229)
- Ministral 8B: 34.4 (#226)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1463 | 1202 |
| FrontierCode | 14% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1412 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 4.1% | — |
| SciCode | 47% | — |
| WeirdML | 32.3% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 946 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Inkling: 29.5 (#76)
- Ministral 8B: 16.2 (#140)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 11.1% |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25% | — |

## Reasoning

- Inkling: 40.6 (#48)
- Ministral 8B: 17.7 (#279)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1452 | 1191 |
| DTBench | 87.5% | 45.7% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 36.5% | — |
| SimpleBench | 50% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 79.5% | — |
| CritPt | 5.4% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 21% | — |
| LMCA | 37.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.6 | — |

## Math

- Inkling: 31.2 (#198)
- Ministral 8B: 23.7 (#262)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1482 | 1188 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 33.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 4.9% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | — |
| ProofBench | 0% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 14.9% |

## Knowledge

- Inkling: 55.2 (#44)
- Ministral 8B: 12.5 (#292)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.3% | 27.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1468 | 1170 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |

## Multilingual

- Inkling: 54.2 (#49)
- Ministral 8B: 35.3 (#242)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1434 | 1165 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1495 | 1193 |
| LMArena Russian | 1430 | 1195 |
| LMArena French | 1453 | — |
| LMArena German | 1456 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1401 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1442 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Inkling: 75.3 (#65)
- Ministral 8B: 60.7 (#245)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1427 | 1161 |

## Long Context

- Inkling: 43.9 (#79)
- Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#222)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1436 | 1212 |

## Writing & Preference

- Inkling: 65.5 (#48)
- Ministral 8B: 39.8 (#241)

| Benchmark | Inkling | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1191 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1390 | 1175 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1436 | 1166 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1611 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1226 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Inkling better than Ministral 8B?

Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 26× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Inkling or Ministral 8B?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens; Inkling lists at $1.87 and $4.68.

### Is Inkling or Ministral 8B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (34.1 vs 34.4); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Ministral 8B does, with 128K tokens against 66K.

### How many benchmarks do Inkling and Ministral 8B share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling has 41 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.