Model comparison

Inkling-Small vs Qwen3.5 397B-A17B

Inkling-Small and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (46.5 vs 46.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 26 shared benchmarks.

Inkling-Small Thinking Machines Lab

46.5

Rank #63 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B Alibaba (Qwen)

46.0

Rank #67 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling-Small scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads 53.3 to 48.2.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3): 46.3% for Inkling-Small and 31.2% for Qwen3.5 397B-A17B.
  • Inkling-Small is cheaper at $0.45 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.60 / $3.60 for Qwen3.5 397B-A17B.
  • Inkling-Small accepts more context: 524K tokens versus 262K.

Side by side

Inkling-Small and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B specifications
Inkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
ProviderThinking Machines LabAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index46.546.0
Released2026-07-152026-02-01
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window524K262K
Max output1.05M66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.45$0.60
Output $ / M tokens$1.20$3.60
Results tracked3336

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Category by category

Coding Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 43.6 (#85), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 42.0 (#114)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena WebDev14091400
LMArena Coding14511465
SciCode48.7%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Inkling-Small: —, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 33.3 (#53)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
APEX-Agents—24.9%
τ²-bench Airline—81.5%
τ²-bench Banking—9.8%
τ²-bench Retail—84.4%
τ²-bench Telecom—97.8%

Reasoning Inkling-Small leads

Inkling-Small: 38.6 (#63), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 34.5 (#70)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
Chess Puzzles18%13%
LMArena Hard Prompts14231448
Mystery Game Puzzles6%18%
Epoch Capabilities Index150.15146.65
ARC-AGI-240.1%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—73.7%
NYT Connections (extended)—58.9%
ARC-AGI-184%—
CritPt8.3%—
Thematic Generalization—65.1%
DTBench—87.5%
LMCA—37.9%

Math Too close to call

Inkling-Small: 45.1 (#77), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 46.1 (#73)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)46.3%31.2%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202590%88.9%
LMArena Math14591454
FrontierMath Tier 417.1%—
ProofBench6%—

Knowledge Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Inkling-Small: 48.2 (#77), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 53.3 (#58)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
GPQA Diamond88.5%86.4%
LMArena Expert14421462
SimpleQA Verified19.1%—

Multimodal Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Inkling-Small: 39.1 (#62), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 40.7 (#44)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Vision12351263

Multilingual Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Inkling-Small: 51.7 (#104), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 53.7 (#59)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Non-English14021430
LMArena Chinese14651500
LMArena French14361461
LMArena German14051447
LMArena Japanese14051426
LMArena Korean13631384
LMArena Russian13911429
LMArena Spanish14281441

Instruction Following Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Inkling-Small: 73.8 (#114), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 75.0 (#77)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Instruction Following13991424

Long Context Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Inkling-Small: 42.7 (#118), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 44.1 (#74)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Longer Query14011442

Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads

Inkling-Small: 59.6 (#107), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 62.3 (#79)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkInkling-SmallQwen3.5 397B-A17B
LMArena Text14141438
LMArena Creative Writing13311401
EQ-Bench Creative Writing14911478
LMArena Multi-Turn14181446

Frequently asked questions

Is Inkling-Small better than Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?

Inkling-Small and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (46.5 vs 46.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, Inkling-Small or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?

Inkling-Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.45 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 397B-A17B lists at $0.60 and $3.60.

Is Inkling-Small or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B better for coding?

Inkling-Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.6 versus 42.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Inkling-Small does, with 524K tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Inkling-Small and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B share?

26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling-Small has 33 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B has 36.

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