# Grok 4.5 vs Inkling-Small

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Grok 4.5 and Inkling-Small across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/grok-4-5-vs-inkling-small
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 9
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Grok 4.5 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

- Grok 4.5 leads overall 68.1 to 59.25.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 78.4 for Grok 4.5 and 48.8 for Inkling-Small.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.0 in Agentic, with scores of 83.3% 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 | Grok 4.5 | Inkling-Small |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | xAI | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 500K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 68.1 | 59.25 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 15 | 25 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $0.58 / $1.44 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Grok 4.5
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 60.5 (Supported · #19/152)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 36.9 (Supported · #128/152)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 15.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 83.3% | 64.7% | Grok 4.5 |
| deepSwe | 53% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 67.8% | 55.1% | Grok 4.5 |
| 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: Grok 4.5
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 62.2 (Supported · #16/151)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 43.8 (Supported · #97/151)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Pro | 64.7% | 55.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 83.3% | 64.7% | Grok 4.5 |
| cursorBench32 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | 89.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 87.4% | 85.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 86.6% | 82.2% | Grok 4.5 |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 80.2% | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 48.7% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 78.4 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 48.8 (#39/48)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 74% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 81.3% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 77.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 44.8 (#20/20)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 42.7 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 52.6% | 40.1% | Grok 4.5 |
| ARC-AGI-3 | 0.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CritPt | Coming soon | 8.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Grok 4.5
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 69.4 (Supported · #14/183)
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 56.5 (Supported · #46/183)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 92.9% | 83.6% | Grok 4.5 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 89.2% | 85.6% | Grok 4.5 |
| 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: Coming soon
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.6 (#25/123)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 82.2% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 76.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Inkling-Small | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 95.5% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 90.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Grok 4.5 or Inkling-Small?

Grok 4.5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Grok 4.5 and Inkling-Small?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 78.4 for Grok 4.5 and 48.8 for Inkling-Small.

### How many benchmarks does Grok 4.5 cover on BenchLM?

Grok 4.5 currently has 15 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

- [Grok 4.5 vs Inkling](/compare/grok-4-5-vs-inkling)
- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)
- [Grok 4.5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-grok-4-5)
- [Inkling-Small vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-inkling-small)

## Explore More

- [Grok 4.5 profile](/models/grok-4-5)
- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)