# Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Inkling-Small

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

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

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 10
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 4.6 leads overall 62.96 to 59.25.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 48.2 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 89.6 for Inkling-Small.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.0 in Agentic, with scores of 59.1% and 64.7%.
- 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 Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling-Small |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 200K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 62.96 | 59.25 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 25 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $3.00 / $15.00 | $0.58 / $1.44 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 4.6
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 44 (Supported · #93/152)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 36.9 (Supported · #128/152)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.1% | 64.7% | Inkling-Small |
| OSWorld-Verified | 72.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 65.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 62.92% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 8.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| JobBench | 36.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 57.3% | 55.1% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| ApprenticeBench | 2% | 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 Sonnet 4.6
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 52.2 (Supported · #48/151)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 43.8 (Supported · #97/151)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 79.6% | 80.2% | Inkling-Small |
| SWE-Rebench | 60.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| React Native Evals | 80.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | 51.48% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | 48.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 24.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.1% | 85.9% | Inkling-Small |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 77.4% | 82.2% | Inkling-Small |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 55.9% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 64.7% | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 48.7% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 54.1 (#33/48)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 48.8 (#39/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 77.4% | 81.3% | Inkling-Small |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 74% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 77.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 67.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 42.7 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

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

### Knowledge

- Winner: Inkling-Small
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 55.8 (Supported · #51/183)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 56.5 (Supported · #46/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 89.9% | 89.5% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| SuperGPQA | 95% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 49% | 47.8% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 85.6% | 83.6% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.3% | 85.6% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 89.5% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 31.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 48.2 (#86/123)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.6 (#25/123)

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

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 49 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 76.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 32.400% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 8.300% | 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 Sonnet 4.6 or Inkling-Small?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

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

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 48.2 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 89.6 for Inkling-Small.

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 currently has 26 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 Sonnet 4.6 vs Inkling](/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-inkling)
- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)
- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Inkling-Small vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-inkling-small)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-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)