# Inkling-Small vs MiniMax M3

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Inkling-Small and MiniMax M3 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/inkling-small-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

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

## Quick Verdict

Pick MiniMax M3 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

- MiniMax M3 leads overall 61.55 to 59.25.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 42.7 for Inkling-Small and 78 for MiniMax M3.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond (Vals) in Knowledge, with scores of 83.6% and 92.7%.
- MiniMax M3 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Inkling-Small | MiniMax M3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Thinking Machines Lab | MiniMax |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Hybrid | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 59.25 | 61.55 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 25 | 27 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.58 / $1.44 | $0.30 / $1.20 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: MiniMax M3
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 36.9 (Supported · #128/152)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 42.1 (Supported · #107/152)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 64.7% | 66% | MiniMax M3 |
| BrowseComp | 77.4% | 83.5% | MiniMax M3 |
| MCP Atlas | 79.6% | 74.2% | Inkling-Small |
| Toolathlon-Verified | 54.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 55.1% | 53.6% | Inkling-Small |
| OSWorld-Verified | Coming soon | 70.1% | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 74.5% | Coming soon |
| BankerToolBench | Coming soon | 76.1% | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | Coming soon | 19.8% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Coming soon | 4.6% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 43.8 (Supported · #97/151)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 48.8 (Estimated · #66/151)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.2% | 80.5% | MiniMax M3 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 55.9% | 59% | MiniMax M3 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 64.7% | 66.0% | MiniMax M3 |
| SciCode | 48.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 85.9% | 82.2% | Inkling-Small |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 82.2% | 75.0% | Inkling-Small |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 42.1% | Coming soon |
| VIBE V2 | Coming soon | 50.1% | Coming soon |
| SVG-Bench | Coming soon | 63.7% | Coming soon |
| KernelBench Hard | Coming soon | 28.8% | Coming soon |
| OpenHarmony Bench | Coming soon | 48.4% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 48.8 (#39/48)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 52.2 (#34/48)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 74% | 78.1% | MiniMax M3 |
| CharXiv | 81.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OfficeQA Pro | Coming soon | 45.1% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 91.6% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 84.6% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 85.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 42.7 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 78 (#4/20)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 40.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CritPt | 8.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Inkling-Small
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 56.5 (Supported · #46/183)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 53.2 (Supported · #64/183)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 89.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | 89.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 47.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 31.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 83.6% | 92.7% | MiniMax M3 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 85.6% | 84.2% | Inkling-Small |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.6 (#25/123)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 93.7 (#4/123)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 82.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 76.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | 95.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 90.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| USAMO 2026 | Coming soon | 85.7% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Inkling-Small or MiniMax M3?

MiniMax M3 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Inkling-Small and MiniMax M3?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 42.7 for Inkling-Small and 78 for MiniMax M3.

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

Inkling-Small currently has 25 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does MiniMax M3 cover on BenchLM?

MiniMax M3 currently has 27 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)
- [MiniMax M3 vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-minimax-m3)
- [Inkling-Small vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-inkling-small)
- [MiniMax M3 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-minimax-m3)

## Explore More

- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [MiniMax M3 profile](/models/minimax-m3)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)