# Claude Fable 5 vs Inkling-Small

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Fable 5 and Inkling-Small across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-fable-vs-inkling-small
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 9
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Fable 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Inkling-Small only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Fable 5 leads overall 81.43 to 59.25.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 74.6 for Claude Fable 5 and 36.9 for Inkling-Small.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) in Agentic, with scores of 80.5% and 55.1%.
- Inkling-Small is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Fable 5 | Inkling-Small |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 1M+ | 1M |
| Overall Score | 81.43 | 59.25 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 19 | 25 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $10.00 / $50.00 | $0.58 / $1.44 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Fable 5
- Claude Fable 5 public-lane score: 74.6 (Supported · #3/152)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 36.9 (Supported · #128/152)

| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 34.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 84.3% | 64.7% | Claude Fable 5 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 85% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 80.5% | 55.1% | Claude Fable 5 |
| ApprenticeBench | 34% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 77.4% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 79.6% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Coming soon | 54.4% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Fable 5
- Claude Fable 5 public-lane score: 77 (Supported · #2/151)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 43.8 (Supported · #97/151)

| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 95% | 80.2% | Claude Fable 5 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 80% | 55.9% | Claude Fable 5 |
| FrontierSWE v2 | 47.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 53.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 84.3% | 64.7% | Claude Fable 5 |
| cursorBench31 | 70.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 70.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | 89.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 89.8% | 85.9% | Claude Fable 5 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 95.0% | 82.2% | Claude Fable 5 |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 48.7% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Fable 5 public-lane score: 62.5 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 48.8 (#39/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 38.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OfficeQA Pro | 57.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 74% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 81.3% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 77.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Fable 5 public-lane score: 77.6 (#6/20)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 42.7 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 40.1% | Coming soon |
| CritPt | Coming soon | 8.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Fable 5
- Claude Fable 5 public-lane score: 83.3 (Supported · #2/183)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 56.5 (Supported · #46/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 93.2% | 83.6% | Claude Fable 5 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 91.5% | 85.6% | Claude Fable 5 |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 89.5% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 89.5% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 47.8% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 31.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Fable 5 public-lane score: 78.5 (#56/123)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.6 (#25/123)

| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 82.2% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Fable 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 76.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 95.5% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 90.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Fable 5 or Inkling-Small?

Claude Fable 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Fable 5 and Inkling-Small?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 74.6 for Claude Fable 5 and 36.9 for Inkling-Small.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Fable 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Fable 5 currently has 19 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Inkling-Small cover on BenchLM?

Inkling-Small currently has 25 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-vs-claude-fable-5-1)
- [Inkling-Small vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-inkling-small)
- [Claude Fable 5 vs Inkling](/compare/claude-fable-vs-inkling)
- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)

## Explore More

- [Claude Fable 5 profile](/models/claude-fable)
- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)