# Claude Opus 4.6 vs Inkling-Small

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Opus 4.6 and Inkling-Small across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-opus-4-6-vs-inkling-small
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

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

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.6 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 Opus 4.6 leads overall 69 to 59.25.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 52.6 for Claude Opus 4.6 and 89.6 for Inkling-Small.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is HLE w/o tools in Knowledge, with scores of 40% and 31.6%.
- Inkling-Small is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Opus 4.6 | Inkling-Small |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 69 | 59.25 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 34 | 25 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $0.58 / $1.44 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.6
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 50.1 (Supported · #56/152)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 36.9 (Supported · #128/152)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 65.4% | 64.7% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| BrowseComp | 83.7% | 77.4% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 72.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | 70.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | 73.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 66.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 61.85% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | 19.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| JobBench | 36.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ApprenticeBench | 5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 79.6% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Coming soon | 54.4% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 55.1% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.6
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 56.6 (Supported · #37/151)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 43.8 (Supported · #97/151)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.8% | 80.2% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| SWE-bench Verified* | 75.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench Pro | 70.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 53.4% | 55.9% | Inkling-Small |
| SWE-Rebench | 65.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| React Native Evals | 84.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | 57.57% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 26.9% | 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: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 59.5 (#28/48)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 48.8 (#39/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 77.3% | 74% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| ERQA | 51.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | 83.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (MM) | 64.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 81.3% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 77.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 67.1 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 42.7 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 40.1% | Coming soon |
| CritPt | Coming soon | 8.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 61 (Estimated · #34/183)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 56.5 (Supported · #46/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 91.3% | 89.5% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| GPQA-D | 89.2% | 89.5% | Inkling-Small |
| SuperGPQA | 95% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 82% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Arcee) | 89.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 53% | 47.8% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| HLE w/o tools | 40% | 31.6% | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| HealthBench Hard | 14.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (Text) | 52.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 83.6% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 52.6 (#78/123)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.6 (#25/123)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 82.2% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.6 public-lane score: 58.6 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 76.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME25 (Arcee) | 99.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 40.700% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 22.900% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 95.5% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 90.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Opus 4.6 or Inkling-Small?

Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Opus 4.6 and Inkling-Small?

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 52.6 for Claude Opus 4.6 and 89.6 for Inkling-Small.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Opus 4.6 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Opus 4.6 currently has 34 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 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive)](/compare/claude-opus-4-6-vs-claude-opus-4-6-thinking)
- [Inkling-Small vs Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive)](/compare/claude-opus-4-6-thinking-vs-inkling-small)
- [Claude Opus 4.6 vs Inkling](/compare/claude-opus-4-6-vs-inkling)
- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)

## Explore More

- [Claude Opus 4.6 profile](/models/claude-opus-4-6)
- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)