GPT-6 Astra vs Inkling 2 Small
Full profiles: GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI) and Inkling 2 Small (Thinking Machines): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 13 sources
As of 13 Nov 2026, GPT-6 Astra is ahead of Inkling 2 Small on quality (67.1 vs 57.9 on the BenchLeader Index), but Inkling 2 Small is 42× cheaper at $0.475 vs $20.00 per 1M tokens blended. Choose GPT-6 Astra for reasoning (72 vs 53), knowledge (72 vs 54), and coding (73 vs 60); choose Inkling 2 Small for fast first answers (63.9 s vs 227.9 s) and long context (66 vs 65), where it also streams 3×+ faster.
Key facts (as of 13 Nov 2026)
- GPT-6 Astra scores 67.1 on the BenchLeader Index and Inkling 2 Small scores 57.9 (BenchLeader, 13 Nov 2026).
- GPT-6 Astra 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 3×+ faster than GPT-6 Astra (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 13 Nov 2026).
- Of the 48 benchmarks both models have, GPT-6 Astra leads 38 (BenchLeader, 13 Nov 2026).
- On Arena WebDev, GPT-6 Astra is rated 1764 and Inkling 2 Small 1647 (LMArena, as published by 13 Nov 2026).
GPT-6 Astra benchmarks 
Inkling 2 Small benchmarks 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 case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | GPT-6 Astra | 73 vs 60 category score; Arena WebDev 1764 vs 1647 | High |
| Agents & tool use | GPT-6 Astra | 64 vs 61 category score; τ³-Banking (AA) 41.4% vs 40.4% | Medium |
| Reasoning | GPT-6 Astra | 72 vs 53 category score; HLE-Diamond (AA) 63.8% vs 28.7% | High |
| Knowledge | GPT-6 Astra | 72 vs 54 category score; AA-Omniscience v1.1 42.4 vs 16.1 | High |
| Long documents | Inkling 2 Small | 66 vs 65 category score; AA-LCR v1.1 83.3% vs 80.7% | Medium |
| Images and other media | GPT-6 Astra | 66 vs 64 category score; MMMU-Pro 86.9% vs 81.6% | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | GPT-6 Astra | 66 vs 59 on Arena votes | High |
| Lowest cost | Inkling 2 Small | $0.475 vs $20.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.022 vs $0.800 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Inkling 2 Small | 63.9 s (Inkling 2 Small) vs 227.9 s (GPT-6 Astra (max)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- GPT-6 Astra (max) leads on quality: 67.1 vs 57.9.
- GPT-6 Astra (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, human preference, knowledge, multimodal, reasoning.
- Inkling 2 Small is stronger in long context.
- Inkling 2 Small is 42× cheaper ($0.475 vs $20.00 per 1M blended).
- Inkling 2 Small streams 2.5× faster (90 vs 36 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | GPT-6 Astra | Inkling 2 Small |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | OpenAI | Thinking Machines |
| Released | 2 Sep 2026 | 5 Nov 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,050,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Compared at | GPT-6 Astra (max) | Inkling 2 Small |
| Open weights | No | No |
| 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.
| Category | GPT-6 Astra (max) | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 72.4 | 52.8 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Coding | 73.2 | 60.3 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Agents & tools | 64.4 | 61.1 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Maths | 70.8 | – | not comparable |
| Knowledge | 72.3 | 53.5 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Human preference | 66.2 | 58.6 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Multimodal | 65.6 | 64.0 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Long context | 65.0 | 66.4 | Inkling 2 Small |
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.
Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Maths, Instruction following.
Model, click to add or removeIndex
Where sources disagree
Across the 48 benchmarks both have, GPT-6 Astra leads 38, Inkling 2 Small leads 9 and 1 is a tie. Every overall index that rates both puts GPT-6 Astra ahead.
| Overall index | GPT-6 Astra (max) | Inkling 2 Small | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 67.1 | 57.9 | GPT-6 Astra |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | 56.9 | 30.6 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Vals Index | 65.0 | 56.1 | GPT-6 Astra |
| Arena Text | 1474 | 1412 | GPT-6 Astra |
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.
| Measure | GPT-6 Astra (max) | Inkling 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) | $6.24 | $1.18 |
| Output tokens per task (AA Index) | 52k | 150k |
| Of which reasoning | 36k | 88k |
| Time per task (AA Index) | 24 min | 28 min |
| Output speed | 36 tok/s | 90 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 227.9 s | 63.9 s |
| Time to a complete answer | 533.7 s | 163.6 s |
Per token is not per task: an average task of Artificial Analysis' Intelligence Index cost $6.24 on GPT-6 Astra (max) and $1.18 on Inkling 2 Small, and Inkling 2 Small wrote 2.9× as many output tokens for the same work, which a per-token price hides.
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. GPT-6 Astra (max) scores 67.1 and takes 228 s to its first answer token; GPT-6 Astra scores 66.8 in 5 s, GPT-6 Astra (high) scores 66.3 in 57 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
151 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.
| Metric | Publisher | GPT-6 Astra (max) | Inkling 2 Small |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 67.1 | 57.9 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | 64.4 | 61.1 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 73.2 | 60.3 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | 66.2 | 58.6 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 72.3 | 53.5 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 65.0 | 66.4 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 70.8 | – |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | 65.6 | 64.0 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 72.4 | 52.8 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $20.00 | $0.475 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 36 tok/s | 90 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 227.9 s | 63.9 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,050,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 95.8% | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam | Scale AI / CAIS | 54.8%† | – |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 83.6%† | – |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1500 | 1438 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 92.7%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 92.7% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 96.1% | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 54.7% | 44.1% |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 63.8% | 28.7% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 97.5% | 96.5%† |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 95.0% | 81.7%† |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 98.6% | – |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 31.7% | – |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 70.5% | 35.0% |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | 53.1% | 25.2% |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 74.0% | – |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 84.0% | – |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 64.1%† | – |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 97.1%† | – |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 66.6%† | – |
| BTF-3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 13.5%† | – |
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | 56.5% | 52.3% |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 93.3% | – |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 53.3% | – |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | 79.4%† | – |
Show all 151 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | GPT-6 Astra (max) | Inkling 2 Small |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1548 | 1485 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1764 | 1647 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | 87.5%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 80.4% | – |
| IOI | Vals AI | 100.0% | – |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | 67.7% | – |
| Code Migration v1.1 | Vals AI | 80.6% | – |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | 5.5% | 0.5% |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | Vals AI | 43.3% | 43.1% |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | 27.6% | – |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 89.6% | 81.5% |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | 59.1%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Refactoring | Scale AI SEAL | 59.0%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | 50.7%† | – |
| MirrorCode | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 60.0% | – |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 73.2% | – |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 2951.3 | – |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 65.5% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 59.1% | 13.1% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 88.4% | 81.3% |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | 79.9%† | – |
| GameBench 2 Overall | DuelLab GameBench 2 | 88.6† | – |
| GameBench 2 by reasoning setting | DuelLab GameBench 2 | 94.1† | – |
| Design Arena Website | Design Arena | 1338 | 1335 |
| FrontierCode 1.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 47.0% | – |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 42.4% | 25.4% |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 60.3% | 13.0%† |
| Remote Labor Index | Scale AI / CAIS | 20.8%† | – |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 64.7%† | 46.8% |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | 14.5 | 2.5 |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | 75.6%† | – |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | 91.3%† | – |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 57.3% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | 87.3% | – |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | – | 85.4% |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 65.3%† | – |
| GDPval-AA v2.1, normalised score | Artificial Analysis | 53.7% | – |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1586 | 1630 |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 41.4% | 40.4% |
| ITBench SRE (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 48.6% | – |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 51.3% | 51.3% |
| CUA-bench | Vals AI | 19.2% | – |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | 41.1% | 72.7% |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | 53.5% | – |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | 60.4% | 67.5% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 7.1% | 21.7% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | 5.4% | – |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 39.4% | 46.6% |
| Robo-bench | Vals AI | 23.3% | – |
| SREBench | Vals AI | 56.9% | 1.9% |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 20.7% | 38.9% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 59.6% | 12.6% |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | 62.9% | 2.9% |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | 90.5% | – |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | 1245 | – |
| BALROG | BALROG | 68.3% | – |
| PostTrainBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 41.9% | – |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 15514.7† | – |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 68.5% | 45.6% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 31.0% | 25.2% |
| Harvey LAB-AA v1.1 | Harvey | 8.6% | – |
| EnterpriseOps-Gym | Artificial Analysis | – | 46.8% |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1569 | 1527 |
| GDPx | GDPx by SemiAnalysis | 9.6% | – |
| Design Arena Agentic | Design Arena | 1393 | 1374 |
| RoboDojo (LLM as robot policy) | RoboDojo | 29.0† | – |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 63.3% | 5.7% |
| CWE-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 63.3% | – |
| DeepSec-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 36.9% | – |
| CyberGym end-to-end (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 0.0% | – |
| FACTS Search | 93.3%† | – | |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 93.7% | – |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 97.6% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 100.0% | – |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 99.0%† | – |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 96.8% | – |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1481 | – |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 75.6% | – |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 83.0%† | – |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | 90.6%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 83.0% | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 42.4 | 16.1 |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | 47.5%† | – |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | 48.4%† | – |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | 79.3% | 70.0% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | 71.7% | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 72.7% | 69.5% |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 48.5% | – |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 87.9% | – |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | 68.7% | – |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 76.2% | – |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 34.2% | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 61.6% | 33.8% |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 50.2% | 73.3% |
| HealthBench Professional (AA) | OpenAI | 66.0% | – |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 89.4% | – |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 75.6% | – |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1474 | 1410 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1474 | 1412 |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1451 | 1345 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1483 | 1415 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1485 | 1410 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1279 | – |
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | 80.0%† | – |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 86.9% | 81.6% |
| SAGE | Vals AI | – | 88.6% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 49.7%† | – |
| Code2Video-AA | Artificial Analysis | 1427 | 1020 |
| AA-3D | Artificial Analysis | 1168 | 1027 |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 80.7% | 83.3% |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1474 | – |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | 41.7% | 20.6% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 169† | – |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | 84.5%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 82.2% | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | 56.9 | 30.6 |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 52.7 | – |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | 349.6 | – |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | 65.0 | 56.1 |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | 55.6% | 61.5% |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | 27.1% | – |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | 65.1% | 32.7% |
| Vals Router Index | Vals AI | 65.0%† | – |
| AA Cyber Index | Artificial Analysis | 33.4 | – |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 12.1%† | 16.2% |
| Metadata | |||
| AA Openness Index | Artificial 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).
- GPT-6 Astra (max): 1 new result (PostTrainBench); 2 score revisions.
- Inkling 2 Small: 2 new results (MysteryMechanism, Vals Science Index); 1 score revision.
- GPT-6 Astra (max): 1 new result (MirrorCode); 1 score revision.
- Inkling 2 Small: 3 new results (SciCode, APEX-Agents, MLCR).
- GPT-6 Astra (max): BenchLeader Index 68.1 → 67.4.
- GPT-6 Astra (max): 2 score revisions.
- 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.
Related comparisons
- GPT-6 Astra vs Claude Fable 5.2
- GPT-6 Astra vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- GPT-6 Astra vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Inkling 2 Small vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Inkling 2 Small vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Inkling 2 Small vs Claude Fable 5.1
- GPT-5.6 Sol vs Inkling 2 Small
- GPT-6 Astra vs GPT-6.1 Sol
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
GPT-6 Astra vs Inkling 2 Small: questions
- Is GPT-6 Astra better than Inkling 2 Small?
- GPT-6 Astra (max) leads on quality: 67.1 vs 57.9. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; GPT-6 Astra (max) is ahead overall as of 13 Nov 2026, but check the category scores for your use.
- GPT-6 Astra 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 GPT-6 Astra or Inkling 2 Small better for coding?
- GPT-6 Astra scores higher in coding (73 vs 60 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena WebDev, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 1764 for GPT-6 Astra against 1647 for Inkling 2 Small.
- Which is faster, GPT-6 Astra or Inkling 2 Small?
- Inkling 2 Small streams 3×+ faster (90 vs 36 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
- Is GPT-6 Astra or Inkling 2 Small better for agents and tool use?
- GPT-6 Astra scores higher in agentic tasks (64 vs 61 on the category index, where 50 is average). On τ³-Banking (AA), the top shared agents & tools benchmark, it is 41.4% for GPT-6 Astra against 40.4% for Inkling 2 Small.
More questions (4)
- Which is better for long documents?
- Inkling 2 Small scores higher on long-context benchmarks (66 vs 65). Both take about 1.1M tokens: GPT-6 Astra 1,050,000, Inkling 2 Small 1,048,576.
- Which has lower latency?
- Inkling 2 Small answers first: 63.9 s against 227.9 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 GPT-6 Astra vs Inkling 2 Small?
- Across the 48 benchmarks both have, GPT-6 Astra leads 38, Inkling 2 Small leads 9 and 1 is a tie. Every overall index that rates both puts GPT-6 Astra ahead.
- When was Inkling 2 Small released?
- Inkling 2 Small was released on 5 Nov 2026.