# Inkling-Small vs Qwen3.8-27B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Inkling-Small and Qwen3.8-27B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/inkling-small-vs-qwen3-8-27b
- Last updated: September 28, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 15
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick Inkling-Small if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.8-27B only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Inkling-Small leads overall 55.66 to 55.26.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 49.8 for Inkling-Small and 80.9 for Qwen3.8-27B.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is HLE in Knowledge, with scores of 47.8% and 30.8%.
- Qwen3.8-27B 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 | Inkling-Small | Qwen3.8-27B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Thinking Machines Lab | Alibaba |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Hybrid | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 262K |
| Overall Score | 55.66 | 55.26 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 25 | 33 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.58 / $1.44 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Qwen3.8-27B
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 35.4 (Supported · #65/117)
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 61.2 (Supported · #18/117)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 64.7% | 73.0% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| BrowseComp | 77.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 79.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | 54.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 55.1% | 58.4% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| CoWorkBench | Coming soon | 70.7% | Coming soon |
| JobBench | Coming soon | 33.4% | Coming soon |
| Agents' Last Exam | Coming soon | 42.9% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | Coming soon | 84.3% | Coming soon |
| WebArena-Verified | Coming soon | 64.8% | Coming soon |
| AndroidWorld | Coming soon | 81.9% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Qwen3.8-27B
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 40.1 (Supported · #60/142)
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 48.7 (Supported · #45/142)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 55.9% | 61.7% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 64.7% | 73.0% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| SciCode | 48.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 85.9% | 84.0% | Inkling-Small |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 82.2% | 86.0% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 42.3% | Coming soon |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 42.2% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | Coming soon | 90.3% | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | Coming soon | 82.6% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 51.4 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 78.7 (#8/27)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 40.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CritPt | 8.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 49.8 (#40/50)
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 80.9 (#11/50)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 74% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 81.3% | 90.2% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77.4% | 83.7% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 90.0% | Coming soon |
| MathVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 94.6% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | Coming soon | 65.7% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |
| Vision2Web | Coming soon | 62.9% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 91.1% | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | Coming soon | 85.9% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 65.5% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Inkling-Small
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 54.1 (Supported · #48/168)
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 49.2 (Supported · #63/168)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 89.5% | 89.2% | Inkling-Small |
| GPQA-D | 89.5% | 89.2% | Inkling-Small |
| HLE | 47.8% | 30.8% | Inkling-Small |
| HLE w/o tools | 31.6% | 30.8% | Inkling-Small |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 83.6% | 88.9% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 85.6% | 84.3% | Inkling-Small |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Inkling-Small
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.2 (#20/124)
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 83.2 (#45/124)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 82.2% | 79.5% | Inkling-Small |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 76.5 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | 95.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 90.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Inkling-Small or Qwen3.8-27B?

Inkling-Small is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Inkling-Small and Qwen3.8-27B?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 49.8 for Inkling-Small and 80.9 for Qwen3.8-27B.

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

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

### How many benchmarks does Qwen3.8-27B cover on BenchLM?

Qwen3.8-27B currently has 33 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)
- [Qwen3.8-27B vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-qwen3-8-27b)
- [Inkling-Small vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-inkling-small)
- [Qwen3.8-27B vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-qwen3-8-27b)

## Explore More

- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [Qwen3.8-27B profile](/models/qwen3-8-27b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)