# Claude Opus 4.8 vs Inkling

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Opus 4.8 and Inkling across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-inkling
- Last updated: October 14, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 19
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Inkling only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Opus 4.8 leads overall 69.08 to 52.13.
- The clearest category separation is in coding, where the averages are 60.8 for Claude Opus 4.8 and 34 for Inkling.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) in Mathematics, with scores of 56.098% and 4.878%.
- Inkling is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 69.08 | 52.13 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 40 | 24 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $1.87 / $4.68 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.8
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 62.2 (Supported · #18/124)
- Inkling public-lane score: 36.2 (Supported · #72/124)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 21.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 74.6% | 63.8% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| BrowseComp | 84.3% | 77.1% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| DeepSearchQA | 93.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 83.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Finance Agent v2 | 53.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 82.2% | 74.1% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Toolathlon | 59.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 72.97% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | 21.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 71.9% | 47.6% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| CWE-bench v1 | Coming soon | 37.0% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.8
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 60.8 (Supported · #19/149)
- Inkling public-lane score: 34 (Supported · #80/149)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 88.6% | 77.6% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 69.2% | 54.3% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE Multilingual | 84.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 38.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 74.6% | 63.8% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| cursorBench31 | 58.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CursorBench 3.2 | 62.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 46.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 87.8% | 85.5% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 88.6% | 77.6% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| PostTrainBench v1.1 | 32.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 4.1% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 62.8 (#25/29)
- Inkling public-lane score: 79 (#14/29)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-3 | 1.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.50% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 91.2 (#5/54)
- Inkling public-lane score: 67.5 (#35/54)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| OfficeQA Pro | 66.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | 87.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 89.9% | 82% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 80.5% | 78.1% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.8
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 71.4 (Supported · #15/181)
- Inkling public-lane score: 54.5 (Supported · #62/181)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 93.6% | 87.9% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| GPQA-D | 93.6% | 87.9% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| HLE | 57.9% | 46% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| HLE w/o tools | 49.8% | 30% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 92.4% | 87.1% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 89.6% | 86.3% | Claude Opus 4.8 |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| INCLUDE | 87.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 75.4 (#62/128)
- Inkling public-lane score: 87.6 (#35/128)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 79.8% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 84.4 (#1/12)
- Inkling public-lane score: 58.3 (#11/12)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| USAMO 2026 | 96.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 80.000% | 33.333% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 56.098% | 4.878% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 97.1% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Opus 4.8 or Inkling?

Claude Opus 4.8 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Opus 4.8 and Inkling?

The widest category gap is in coding, where the averages are 60.8 for Claude Opus 4.8 and 34 for Inkling.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Opus 4.8 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Opus 4.8 currently has 40 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

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

Inkling currently has 24 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Opus 4.8 vs Inkling-Small](/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-inkling-small)
- [Inkling vs Inkling-Small](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)
- [Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-claude-opus-5-5)
- [Inkling vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-inkling)

## Explore More

- [Claude Opus 4.8 profile](/models/claude-opus-4-8)
- [Inkling profile](/models/inkling)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)