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Claude Fable 5 vs Inkling 2 Small

Full profiles: Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic) and Inkling 2 Small (Thinking Machines): every benchmark, price and rank.

Updated · Data from 12 sources

As of 13 Nov 2026, Claude Fable 5 is ahead of Inkling 2 Small on quality (66.3 vs 57.9 on the BenchLeader Index), but Inkling 2 Small is 42× cheaper at $0.475 vs $20.00 per 1M tokens blended. Claude Fable 5 leads in every category we measure both in. Inkling 2 Small streams ~2× faster.

Key facts (as of 13 Nov 2026)

  • Claude Fable 5 scores 66.3 on the BenchLeader Index and Inkling 2 Small scores 57.9 (BenchLeader, 13 Nov 2026).
  • Claude Fable 5 costs $20.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 13 Nov 2026).
  • Inkling 2 Small costs $0.475 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 13 Nov 2026).
  • Inkling 2 Small streams ~2× faster than Claude Fable 5 (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 13 Nov 2026).
  • Of the 10 benchmarks both models have, Claude Fable 5 leads 6 (BenchLeader, 13 Nov 2026).
Claude Fable 5 benchmarks Anthropic Inkling 2 Small benchmarks Thinking MachinesAdd a third model

Which to pick for…

The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.

Use casePickWhyConfidence
CodingClaude Fable 571 vs 60 category score; ProgramBench 2.0% vs 0.5%High
Agents & tool useEither62 vs 61 category score; MCP Atlas 83.3% vs 85.4%Either
ReasoningClaude Fable 580 vs 53 category scoreHigh
KnowledgeClaude Fable 567 vs 54 category scoreHigh
Chat quality (human preference)Claude Fable 568 vs 59 on Arena votesHigh
Lowest costInkling 2 Small$0.475 vs $20.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.022 vs $0.800–
Fastest first answerClaude Fable 53.4 s (Claude Fable 5) vs 63.9 s (Inkling 2 Small) to the first answer token–
High volume on a budgetNeither flagshipA smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs–

Key differences

  • Claude Fable 5 leads on quality: 66.3 vs 57.9.
  • Claude Fable 5 is stronger in agents & tools, coding, human preference, knowledge, reasoning.
  • Inkling 2 Small is 42× cheaper ($0.475 vs $20.00 per 1M blended).
  • Inkling 2 Small streams 1.6× faster (90 vs 56 tokens per second).

At a glance

SpecClaude Fable 5Inkling 2 Small
DeveloperAnthropicThinking Machines
Released9 Jun 20265 Nov 2026
Context window (tokens)1,000,0001,048,576
Compared atClaude Fable 5Inkling 2 Small
Open weightsNoNo
Price in / out / cached input per 1M$10.00 / $50.00 / $1.00$0.300 / $1.00 / –

Category by category

Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.

CategoryClaude Fable 5Inkling 2 SmallLeader
Reasoning80.152.8Claude Fable 5
Coding70.560.3Claude Fable 5
Agents & tools61.661.1level
Knowledge66.753.5Claude Fable 5
Human preference67.758.6Claude Fable 5
Multimodal–64.0not comparable
Long context–66.4not comparable

On one chart

Each domain on the index's own scale, where 50 is an average model. Click a domain to see the benchmarks behind it. Pick up to 5 models from the list.

2550 avg75ReasoningCodingAgents & toolsKnowledgeHumanpreferenceClaude Fable 5, Reasoning: 80.1Claude Fable 5, Coding: 70.5Claude Fable 5, Agents & tools: 61.6Claude Fable 5, Knowledge: 66.7Claude Fable 5, Human preference: 67.7Inkling 2 Small, Reasoning: 52.8Inkling 2 Small, Coding: 60.3Inkling 2 Small, Agents & tools: 61.1Inkling 2 Small, Knowledge: 53.5Inkling 2 Small, Human preference: 58.6

Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Maths, Instruction following, Long context, Multimodal.

Model, click to add or removeIndex

Where sources disagree

Across the 10 benchmarks both have, Claude Fable 5 leads 6, Inkling 2 Small leads 4. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Fable 5 ahead.

Overall indexClaude Fable 5Inkling 2 SmallLeader
BenchLeader Index66.357.9Claude Fable 5
Arena Text1504†1412Claude Fable 5

Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).

Price, speed and latency

List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page. Cost, tokens and time per benchmark task are measured: Artificial Analysis’ averages over its whole Intelligence Index run.

MeasureClaude Fable 5Inkling 2 Small
Blended price per 1M tokens$20.00$0.475
Input / output per 1M$10.00 / $50.00$0.300 / $1.00
Cached input per 1M$1.00–
Price per task: chat reply$0.019$0.0004
Price per task: summarize a 30-page report$0.150$0.0042
Price per task: code edit$0.135$0.0033
Price per task: agentic coding session$0.800$0.022
Price per task: structured extraction$0.030$0.0008
Agentic coding session, input mostly cached$0.395–
Cost per benchmark task (AA Index)–$1.18
Output tokens per task (AA Index)–150k
Of which reasoning–88k
Time per task (AA Index)–28 min
Output speed56 tok/s90 tok/s
Time to first answer3.4 s63.9 s
Time to a complete answer–163.6 s

Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Fable 5 scores 66.3 and takes 3 s to its first answer token; Claude Fable 5 (max) scores 65.0 in 84 s, Claude Fable 5 (high) scores 63.9 in 3 s. Inkling 2 Small scores 57.9 and takes 64 s to its first answer token. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.

Every benchmark

142 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.

MetricPublisherClaude Fable 5Inkling 2 Small
BenchLeader IndexBenchLeader66.357.9
Agents & tools scoreBenchLeader61.661.1
Coding scoreBenchLeader70.560.3
Human preference scoreBenchLeader67.758.6
Knowledge scoreBenchLeader66.753.5
Reasoning scoreBenchLeader80.152.8
Long context scoreBenchLeader–66.4
Multimodal scoreBenchLeader–64.0
Blended price $/MBenchLeader$20.00$0.475
Output speedBenchLeader56 tok/s90 tok/s
Time to first answerBenchLeader3.4 s63.9 s
Context windowBenchLeader1,000,000 tokens1,048,576 tokens
Reasoning
GPQA DiamondEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub85.9%†–
SimpleBenchSimpleBench81.9%†–
Arena Hard PromptsArena (LMArena)1530†1438
LiveBench 1.0 ReasoningLiveBench89.7%†–
GPQA Diamond (AA)Artificial Analysis92.6%†–
Humanity's Last Exam (AA)Artificial Analysis55.5%†44.1%
HLE-Diamond (AA)Artificial Analysis–28.7%
GPQA Diamond (Vals)Vals AI93.2%–
EnigmaEvalScale AI SEAL39.3%†–
Kagi LLM BenchmarkKagi LLM Benchmark88.8%–
ARC-AGI-1ARC Prize98.5%†96.5%†
ARC-AGI-2ARC Prize89.2%†81.7%†
CritPtArtificial Analysis28.6%†–
CritPt v2 hard subset (AA)Artificial Analysis–35.0%
MysteryMechanismVals AI–25.2%
Chess PuzzlesEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub47.0%†–
Mystery Game PuzzlesEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub52.0%†–
LMCAEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub60.3%†–
DTBenchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub98.4%†–
ForecastBenchForecastBench65.9%†–
BTF-3Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub13.0%†–
Coding
SciCodeSciCode61.0%†52.3%
WeirdMLWeirdML91.9%†–
FrontierCodeCognition53.5%–
GSO-BenchGSO-Bench78.4%–
Show all 142 benchmarks
MetricPublisherClaude Fable 5Inkling 2 Small
Coding
Arena CodingArena (LMArena)1552†1485
Arena WebDevArena (LMArena)1625†1647
LiveBench 1.0 CodingLiveBench86.0%†–
LiveCodeBenchVals AI89.8%–
SWE-bench (Vals)Vals AI95.0%–
Code MigrationVals AI55.1%–
ProgramBenchVals AI2.0%0.5%
SWE-bench MultimodalVals AI–43.1%
Vibe Code Bench v1.1Vals AI90.3%81.5%
SWE Atlas: Codebase QnAScale AI SEAL39.0%†–
SWE Atlas: RefactoringScale AI SEAL54.8%†–
SWE Atlas: Test WritingScale AI SEAL55.6%†–
MirrorCodeEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub70.0%†–
Surface Evolver BenchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub95.0%†–
DeepSWE v1.1Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub69.7%†–
ALE-BenchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub2041.3†–
FrontierSWEEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub47.0%†–
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA)Artificial Analysis42.4%†13.1%
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA)Artificial Analysis84.6%†81.3%
Startrise FrontendStartrise73.8%–
GameBench 2 OverallDuelLab GameBench 265.5–
GameBench 2 by reasoning settingDuelLab GameBench 258.4†–
Design Arena WebsiteDesign Arena12881335
FrontierCode 2.0 (AA)Artificial Analysis–25.4%
Agents & tools
Terminal-BenchTerminal-Bench44.9%†13.0%†
Remote Labor IndexScale AI / CAIS16.1%–
APEX-AgentsMercor63.6%46.8%
Arena AgentArena (LMArena)7.3†2.5
LiveBench Agentic CodingLiveBench62.2%†–
Terminal-Bench HardArtificial Analysis62.9%†–
τ²-Bench Telecom (AA)Artificial Analysis98.5%†–
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals)Vals AI80.5%–
MCP AtlasScale AI SEAL83.3%85.4%
HiL-BenchScale AI SEAL56.3%–
τ³-bench Bankingτ²-bench39.7%†–
GDPval-AA v2.1Artificial Analysis–1630
τ³-Banking (AA)Artificial Analysis38.1%†40.4%
Analyst Agent (AA)Artificial Analysis48.8%†51.3%
CyberBenchVals AI–72.7%
Finance Agent v2Vals AI56.3%–
Finance Agent v2.1Vals AI–67.5%
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1Vals AI–21.7%
Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1Vals AI11.3%–
Legal Research BenchVals AI49.5%46.6%
SREBenchVals AI–1.9%
Tax Agent BenchVals AI38.3%38.9%
Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals)Vals AI41.4%12.6%
Terminal-Bench ScienceVals AI15.7%2.9%
Web Search IndexVals AI46.9%–
Arena SearchArena (LMArena)1229†–
PostTrainBenchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub37.3%†–
GBAEvalEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub74.5%–
Vending-Bench 2Andon Labs4529.9–
AutomationBenchArtificial Analysis54.1%†45.6%
GDP.pdf (AA)Artificial Analysis24.0%†25.2%
EnterpriseOps-GymArtificial Analysis51.1%†46.8%
AA-Briefcase v1.1Artificial Analysis1535†1527
Design Arena AgenticDesign Arena12661374
Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA)Artificial Analysis–5.7%
Maths
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub87.0%†–
FrontierMath Tier 4Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub90.2%†–
OTIS Mock AIMEEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub99.7%†–
ProofBenchVals AI95.0%†–
LiveBench MathematicsLiveBench96.0%†–
Arena MathsArena (LMArena)1520†–
Knowledge
SimpleQA VerifiedEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub70.7%†–
LiveBench 1.0 Data AnalysisLiveBench80.5%†–
AA-Omniscience v1.1Artificial Analysis–16.1
MMLU-ProVals AI91.5%–
LegalBenchVals AI88.6%–
CorpFinVals AI71.8%–
TaxEvalVals AI76.9%–
PRBench FinanceScale AI SEAL53.9%–
PRBench LegalScale AI SEAL52.6%–
BioMysteryBenchVals AI–70.0%
Excel Modeling BenchmarkVals AI73.7%–
Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1Vals AI–69.5%
MedCodeVals AI56.1%–
MedScribeVals AI88.5%–
Public Benefits Bench v1.1Vals AI70.4%–
EBR-benchEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub39.5%†–
GDP.pdfEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub30.0%–
AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracyArtificial Analysis–33.8%
AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucinationArtificial Analysis–73.3%
Instruction following
LiveBench LanguageLiveBench90.7%†–
LiveBench Instruction FollowingLiveBench75.8%†–
IFBenchArtificial Analysis63.5%†–
Arena Instruction FollowingArena (LMArena)1509†1410
Human preference
Arena TextArena (LMArena)1504†1412
EQ-Bench 4EQ-Bench1313–
Arena Creative WritingArena (LMArena)1501†1345
Arena Multi-turnArena (LMArena)1517†1415
Arena Longer QueriesArena (LMArena)1522†1410
Multimodal
Arena VisionArena (LMArena)1326†–
MMMU-ProArtificial Analysis–81.6%
MMMU-Pro (Vals)Vals AI89.3%–
MortgageTaxVals AI68.9%–
SAGEVals AI–88.6%
GeoBenchGeoBench89.0%†–
Blueprint-Bench 2Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub38.6%–
Code2Video-AAArtificial Analysis–1020
AA-3DArtificial Analysis–1027
Long context
AA-LCR v1.1Artificial Analysis82.3%†83.3%
Arena DocumentArena (LMArena)1500†–
MLCRArtificial Analysis20.6%†20.6%
Composite
Epoch Capabilities IndexEpoch AI Benchmarking Hub164.1–
LiveBench 1.0LiveBench83.0%†–
AA Intelligence Index v5.0Artificial Analysis–30.6
AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2Artificial Analysis49.6†–
AA Progress Index v1Artificial Analysis329.3†–
Vals IndexVals AI–56.1
Vals Finance IndexVals AI–61.5%
Vals RSI IndexVals AI24.3%†–
Vals Science IndexVals AI–32.7%
Vals Multimodal IndexVals AI74.2%–
Safety & honesty
FORTRESSScale AI SEAL–16.2%
Metadata
AA Openness IndexArtificial Analysis–38.9

Data as of 2026-11-13. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.

DuelLab GameBench 2, release gb2-20261110-2acac640a228 (https://benchmarks.duellab.org/releases/gb2-20261110-2acac640a228/), CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Scores mapped to BenchLeader model names; not endorsed by DuelLab.

What changed

  • Inkling 2 Small: BenchLeader Index 58.4 → 57.9.
  • Inkling 2 Small: 2 new results (FORTRESS, Design Arena Agentic).
  • Inkling 2 Small: 2 new results (MysteryMechanism, Vals Science Index); 1 score revision.
  • Inkling 2 Small: 3 new results (SciCode, APEX-Agents, MLCR).
  • Inkling 2 Small: 8 new results (Arena Text, Arena Hard Prompts, Arena Coding…); 2 score revisions.
  • Inkling 2 Small: BenchLeader Index 57.5 → 58.4.
  • Inkling 2 Small: 1 new result (Arena WebDev).
  • Inkling 2 Small: first results.
  • Claude Fable 5: 1 score revision.
  • Claude Fable 5: 1 score revision.

Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs

Claude Fable 5 vs Inkling 2 Small: questions

Is Claude Fable 5 better than Inkling 2 Small?
Claude Fable 5 leads on quality: 66.3 vs 57.9. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Fable 5 is ahead overall as of 13 Nov 2026, but check the category scores for your use.
Claude Fable 5 vs Inkling 2 Small: which is cheaper, and will that change?
Inkling 2 Small is cheaper today: $0.475 against $20.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
Is Claude Fable 5 or Inkling 2 Small better for coding?
Claude Fable 5 scores higher in coding (71 vs 60 on the category index, where 50 is average).
Which is faster, Claude Fable 5 or Inkling 2 Small?
Inkling 2 Small streams ~2× faster (90 vs 56 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
Is Claude Fable 5 or Inkling 2 Small better for agents and tool use?
They are level in agentic tasks (62 vs 61 on the category index). On MCP Atlas, the top shared agents & tools benchmark, it is 83.3% for Claude Fable 5 against 85.4% for Inkling 2 Small.
More questions (4)
Which is better for long documents?
Both take about 1M tokens: Claude Fable 5 1,000,000, Inkling 2 Small 1,048,576.
Which has lower latency?
Claude Fable 5 answers first: 3.4 s against 63.9 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Fable 5 vs Inkling 2 Small?
Across the 10 benchmarks both have, Claude Fable 5 leads 6, Inkling 2 Small leads 4. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Fable 5 ahead.
When was Inkling 2 Small released?
Inkling 2 Small was released on 5 Nov 2026.