# dots3-note Preview vs Inkling-Small

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for dots3-note Preview and Inkling-Small across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-inkling-small
- Last updated: September 28, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 11
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick dots3-note Preview 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

- dots3-note Preview leads overall 62.64 to 55.66.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 72.9 for dots3-note Preview and 51.4 for Inkling-Small.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-2 in Reasoning, with scores of 81.4% and 40.1%.
- dots3-note Preview 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 | dots3-note Preview | Inkling-Small |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Dots Studio | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 512K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 62.64 | 55.66 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 31 | 25 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.58 / $1.44 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Directional only
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 56.4 (Estimated · #28/117)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 35.4 (Supported · #65/117)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Claw-Eval | 73.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 75.1% | 64.7% | dots3-note Preview |
| Toolathlon-Verified | 55.6% | 54.4% | dots3-note Preview |
| skillsBench | 52.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| APEX-Agents | 30.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 83.3% | 77.4% | dots3-note Preview |
| HLE w/ tools | 52.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | 92.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | 78.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 79.6% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 55.1% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 40.1 (Supported · #60/142)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Codeforces | 3056.0 | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 91.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 75.1% | 64.7% | dots3-note Preview |
| SWE-bench Verified | 78.4% | 80.2% | Inkling-Small |
| SWE Multilingual | 75.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 61% | 55.9% | dots3-note Preview |
| NL2Repo | 49.8% | Coming soon | 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 |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 72.9 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 51.4 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 81.4% | 40.1% | dots3-note Preview |
| CritPt | Coming soon | 8.3% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 67.2 (Unranked · 10 rankable rows)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 49.8 (#40/50)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SimpleVQA | 72.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | 79.1% | 74% | dots3-note Preview |
| MathVision | 87.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench | 19.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 83.1% | 77.4% | dots3-note Preview |
| GDP.pdf (no tools) | 60.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| PerceptionBench | 53.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | 50.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMVU | 79.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | 86.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 81.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 54.1 (Supported · #48/168)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 52.6% | 47.8% | dots3-note Preview |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 89.5% | Coming soon |
| 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
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 85.2 (#37/124)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.2 (#20/124)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 80.4% | 82.2% | Inkling-Small |
| IFEval | 93.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 76.5 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IMOAnswerBench | 90.9% | 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, dots3-note Preview or Inkling-Small?

dots3-note Preview is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between dots3-note Preview and Inkling-Small?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 72.9 for dots3-note Preview and 51.4 for Inkling-Small.

### How many benchmarks does dots3-note Preview cover on BenchLM?

dots3-note Preview currently has 31 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

- [dots3-note Preview vs Inkling](/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-inkling)
- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)
- [dots3-note Preview vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Inkling-Small vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-inkling-small)

## Explore More

- [dots3-note Preview profile](/models/dots3-note-preview)
- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)