# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Inkling

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

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-inkling
- Last updated: September 22, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 14
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 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 Sonnet 5 leads overall 69.47 to 60.31.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 77.4 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 47.6 for Inkling.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) in Agentic, with scores of 74.5% and 47.6%.
- Inkling is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 69.47 | 60.31 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 21 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $1.87 / $4.68 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.2 (Supported · #13/157)
- Inkling public-lane score: 38.9 (Supported · #126/157)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | 63.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | 77.1% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 47.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 74.1% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64 (Supported · #16/159)
- Inkling public-lane score: 41.5 (Supported · #117/159)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | 77.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 54.3% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | 63.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 85.5% | Inkling |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 77.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 4.1% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Inkling public-lane score: 74.1 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (#15/50)
- Inkling public-lane score: 47.6 (#41/50)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | 82% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | 78.1% | Inkling |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.4 (Supported · #23/189)
- Inkling public-lane score: 57.1 (Supported · #49/189)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | 46% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | 30% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 87.1% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 86.3% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 87.9% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 87.9% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 83.9 (#44/124)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 79.8% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 78.5 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 97.1% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Inkling?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Inkling?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 77.4 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 47.6 for Inkling.

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

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

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

Inkling currently has 21 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

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

## Explore More

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