# Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Inkling-Small

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Gemini 3.8 Flash and Inkling-Small across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/gemini-3-8-flash-vs-inkling-small
- Last updated: October 17, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 12
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Gemini 3.8 Flash 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

- Gemini 3.8 Flash leads overall 69.25 to 53.5.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 65.9 for Gemini 3.8 Flash and 36.8 for Inkling-Small.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-2 in Reasoning, with scores of 89.2% and 40.1%.
- Inkling-Small is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Inkling-Small |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Google | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 69.25 | 53.5 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 31 | 28 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.75 / $3.75 | $0.58 / $1.44 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Gemini 3.8 Flash
- Gemini 3.8 Flash public-lane score: 65.9 (Supported · #16/128)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 36.8 (Supported · #77/128)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Finance Agent v2 | 61.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 89.4% | 64.7% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | 19.10% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 59.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 81.3% | 55.1% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| ApprenticeBench | 24% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Hermes Index | 38.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Hermes Bench | 62.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MazeBench | 4% | 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: Gemini 3.8 Flash
- Gemini 3.8 Flash public-lane score: 61 (Supported · #17/150)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 37.7 (Supported · #71/150)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| DeepSWE | 73.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 89.4% | 64.7% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| CursorBench 3.2 | 69.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 89.5% | 85.9% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 80.0% | 82.2% | Inkling-Small |
| FrontierSWE v2 | 19.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CursorBench 4.0 | 39.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Bug Hunt Bench | 18.0 fixes | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 80.2% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 55.9% | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 48.7% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Gemini 3.8 Flash public-lane score: 74.3 (#17/28)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 55 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-1 | 98.50% | 84.00% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 89.2% | 40.1% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| ARC-AGI-3 | 10.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CritPt | Coming soon | 8.3% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Gemini 3.8 Flash public-lane score: 87.3 (#9/54)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 67.5 (#36/54)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv w/o tools | 86.2% | 77.4% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| LVBench | 87.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 74% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 81.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Gemini 3.8 Flash
- Gemini 3.8 Flash public-lane score: 73.5 (Supported · #13/184)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 55.1 (Supported · #59/184)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE-Verified | 54.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 86.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BioMysteryBench (human-solvable) | 88.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BioMysteryBench (human-difficult) | 56.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 94.4% | 83.6% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 90.2% | 85.6% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 89.5% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 89.5% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 47.8% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 31.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Gemini 3.8 Flash public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 93.3 (#9/148)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Gray Swan IPI (15 attempts) | 5.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| IFBench | Coming soon | 82.2% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Gemini 3.8 Flash public-lane score: 69.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 69.8 (#5/12)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 68.421% | 46.316% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 21.951% | 17.073% | Gemini 3.8 Flash |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 95.5% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 90.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Gemini 3.8 Flash or Inkling-Small?

Gemini 3.8 Flash is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Gemini 3.8 Flash and Inkling-Small?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 65.9 for Gemini 3.8 Flash and 36.8 for Inkling-Small.

### How many benchmarks does Gemini 3.8 Flash cover on BenchLM?

Gemini 3.8 Flash currently has 31 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

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

Inkling-Small currently has 28 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber](/compare/gemini-3-8-flash-vs-gemini-3-8-flash-cyber)
- [Inkling-Small vs Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber](/compare/gemini-3-8-flash-cyber-vs-inkling-small)
- [Gemini 3.8 Flash vs Inkling](/compare/gemini-3-8-flash-vs-inkling)
- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)

## Explore More

- [Gemini 3.8 Flash profile](/models/gemini-3-8-flash)
- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)