# Inkling-Small vs Sakana Fugu

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

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

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

## Quick Verdict

Pick Sakana Fugu 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

- Sakana Fugu leads overall 69 to 59.25.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 42.7 for Inkling-Small and 69.5 for Sakana Fugu.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is HLE w/o tools in Knowledge, with scores of 31.6% and 47.2%.
- Sakana Fugu is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Inkling-Small | Sakana Fugu |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Thinking Machines Lab | Sakana AI |
| Type | Open Weight | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Hybrid | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 59.25 | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 25 | 11 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.58 / $1.44 | Pricing unavailable / Pricing unavailable |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 36.9 (Supported · #128/152)
- Sakana Fugu public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Sakana Fugu | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 64.7% | 80.2% | Sakana Fugu |
| 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% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 43.8 (Supported · #97/151)
- Sakana Fugu public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Sakana Fugu | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 55.9% | 59% | Sakana Fugu |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 64.7% | 80.2% | Sakana Fugu |
| SciCode | 48.7% | 60.1% | Sakana Fugu |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 85.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 82.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | Coming soon | 92.9% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench Pro | Coming soon | 87.8% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 48.8 (#39/48)
- Sakana Fugu public-lane score: 68.8 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Sakana Fugu | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 74% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 81.3% | 85.1% | Sakana Fugu |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 42.7 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)
- Sakana Fugu public-lane score: 69.5 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Sakana Fugu | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 40.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CritPt | 8.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MRCRv2 | Coming soon | 86.6% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 56.5 (Supported · #46/183)
- Sakana Fugu public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Sakana Fugu | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 89.5% | 95.5% | Sakana Fugu |
| GPQA-D | 89.5% | 95.5% | Sakana Fugu |
| HLE | 47.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 31.6% | 47.2% | Sakana Fugu |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 83.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 85.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Inkling-Small public-lane score: 89.6 (#25/123)
- Sakana Fugu public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Sakana Fugu | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 82.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

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

| Benchmark | Inkling-Small | Sakana Fugu | 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 Sakana Fugu?

Sakana Fugu is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Inkling-Small and Sakana Fugu?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 42.7 for Inkling-Small and 69.5 for Sakana Fugu.

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

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

### How many benchmarks does Sakana Fugu cover on BenchLM?

Sakana Fugu currently has 11 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Inkling-Small vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)
- [Sakana Fugu vs Inkling](/compare/inkling-vs-sakana-fugu)
- [Inkling-Small vs Sakana Fugu-Ultra](/compare/inkling-small-vs-sakana-fugu-ultra)
- [Sakana Fugu vs Sakana Fugu-Ultra](/compare/sakana-fugu-vs-sakana-fugu-ultra)

## Explore More

- [Inkling-Small profile](/models/inkling-small)
- [Sakana Fugu profile](/models/sakana-fugu)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)