Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.8 vs Inkling-Small
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 46.5 on the Noometry Index. Inkling-Small costs 16× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 33 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 33 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 9 categories and Inkling-Small in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 78.2 to 44.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ProofBench: 69% for Claude Opus 4.8 and 6% for Inkling-Small.
- Inkling-Small is cheaper at $0.45 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
- Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 524K.
- Inkling-Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Noometry Index | 60.7 | 46.5 |
| Released | 2026-05-28 | 2026-07-15 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 524K |
| Max output | 128K | 1.05M |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.45 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 65 | 33 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 60.2 (#9), Inkling-Small: 43.3 (#80)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1556 | 1408 |
| SciCode | 53.5% | 48.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1491 | 1451 |
| DeepSWE | 59% | — |
| FrontierCode | 46.5% | — |
| GSO | 47.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 82.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,564 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#10), Inkling-Small: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 48.9% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 8.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 39.7% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 50.2% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 33.8% | — |
| GBAEval | 70.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1204 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,787 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 64.6 (#14), Inkling-Small: 39.0 (#53)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | 40.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | 84% |
| CritPt | 20.9% | 8.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 34% | 18% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1481 | 1424 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36% | 6% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 158.3 | 150.13 |
| SimpleBench | 64.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 88.8% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 91.1% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 23.5% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 28.6% | — |
| DTBench | 94.9% | — |
| LMCA | 57.5% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 87.5% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.9 | — |
Math Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 78.2 (#11), Inkling-Small: 44.9 (#65)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 80% | 46.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | 17.1% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.3% | 90% |
| ProofBench | 69% | 6% |
| LMArena Math | 1487 | 1453 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 91.8% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 47.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 31.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#26), Inkling-Small: 48.3 (#71)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 91% | 88.5% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53% | 19.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1501 | 1442 |
Multimodal Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 43.2 (#20), Inkling-Small: 38.4 (#59)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1295 | 1235 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 14.5% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 42.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1475 | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 55.4 (#31), Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#102)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1450 | 1400 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1509 | 1458 |
| LMArena French | 1482 | 1438 |
| LMArena German | 1470 | 1412 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1440 | 1399 |
| LMArena Korean | 1432 | 1355 |
| LMArena Russian | 1476 | 1392 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1470 | 1426 |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 77.6 (#22), Inkling-Small: 73.9 (#112)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1397 |
Long Context Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#37), Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#113)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1482 | 1401 |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.8 leads
Claude Opus 4.8: 72.1 (#17), Inkling-Small: 59.8 (#102)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1460 | 1413 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1453 | 1330 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1840 | 1491 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1476 | 1420 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1281 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than Inkling-Small?
Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 46.5 on the Noometry Index. Inkling-Small costs 16× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or Inkling-Small?
Inkling-Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.45 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 4.8 or Inkling-Small better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 60.2 versus 43.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 524K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and Inkling-Small share?
33 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and Inkling-Small has 33.