# Claude Opus 4.5 vs Inkling-Small

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Opus 4.5 and Inkling-Small across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-inkling-small
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 11
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Inkling-Small if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Opus 4.5 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Inkling-Small leads overall 59.25 to 58.41.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 39.5 for Claude Opus 4.5 and 89.6 for Inkling-Small.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is MCP Atlas in Agentic, with scores of 42.3% and 79.6%.
- Inkling-Small is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Inkling-Small also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 200K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 58.41 | 59.25 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 45 | 25 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $0.58 / $1.44 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 43.2 (Estimated · #97/152)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 36.9 (Supported · #128/152)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.3% | 64.7% | Inkling-Small |
| OSWorld-Verified | 66.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld | 66.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | 59.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| QwenClawBench | 52.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | 70.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VITA-Bench | 23.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepPlanning | 26.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | 43.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 42.3% | 79.6% | Inkling-Small |
| MCP-Tasks | 71.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | 76.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 50.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 64.23% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| JobBench | 32.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 77.4% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Coming soon | 54.4% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 55.1% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 56.6 (Estimated · #36/151)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 43.8 (Supported · #97/151)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.9% | 80.2% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 84.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 57.1% | 55.9% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 77.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | 43.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 64.7% | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 48.7% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 85.9% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 82.2% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Inkling-Small
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 23.5 (#46/48)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 48.8 (#39/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 70.6% | 74% | Inkling-Small |
| MathVision | 74.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 68.5% | 81.3% | Inkling-Small |
| VideoMMMU | 84.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | 45.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| V* | 67.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 77.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 72.1 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 42.7 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LongBench v2 | 64.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AI-Needle | 74% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 40.1% | Coming soon |
| CritPt | Coming soon | 8.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 53.9 (Estimated · #61/183)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 56.5 (Supported · #46/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 87% | 89.5% | Inkling-Small |
| SuperGPQA | 70.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 89.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Redux | 96.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| C-Eval | 92.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 30.8% | 47.8% | Inkling-Small |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 89.5% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 31.6% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 83.6% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Inkling-Small
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 39.5 (#105/123)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.6 (#25/123)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFEval | 90.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| IFBench | 58% | 82.2% | Inkling-Small |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 82.9 (#2/12)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU-ProX | 85.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NOVA-63 | 56.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 58.3 (#6/7)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 76.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | 95.1% | 95.5% | Inkling-Small |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 92.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Nov 2025 | 93.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 85.3% | 90.2% | Inkling-Small |
| MMAnswerBench | 84.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 20.690% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 4.167% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Opus 4.5 or Inkling-Small?

Inkling-Small is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Opus 4.5 and Inkling-Small?

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 39.5 for Claude Opus 4.5 and 89.6 for Inkling-Small.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Opus 4.5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Opus 4.5 currently has 45 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 Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.5 Thinking](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-claude-opus-4-5-thinking)
- [Inkling-Small vs Claude Opus 4.5 Thinking](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-thinking-vs-inkling-small)
- [Claude Opus 4.5 vs Inkling](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-inkling)
- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)

## Explore More

- [Claude Opus 4.5 profile](/models/claude-opus-4-5)
- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)