Compare / Mistral Small 4 vs Inkling Small
Mistral Small 4 vs Inkling Small
Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 21 results on 2 sources that measured both models.
Results as of 8 October 2026 (catalogue release 2026-10-08-4199ce0620fe).
Mistral Small 4 or Inkling Small? The short answer
Pick Inkling Small if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 25.7 against 11.3). Pick Mistral Small 4 if cost matters more: it costs 48% less per game of bullet chess on BulletBench.
- Mistral Small 4 is cheaper to run: $0.004 against $0.007 per game of bullet chess on BulletBench (48% less).
- Inkling Small scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 25.7 against 11.3.
- Inkling Small is newer: released 15 Jul 2026, against 16 Mar 2026 for Mistral Small 4.
- On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: Inkling Small does better for agents and tool use and reasoning and knowledge.
At a glance
| Mistral Small 4 | Inkling Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per million tokens | $0.15 in · $0.60 out | $0.45 in · $1.20 out |
| Blended (3 in : 1 out) | $0.26 | $0.64 |
| Cheapest host, blended | $0.26 (Mistral) | – |
| Cost per game of bullet chess (BulletBench) | $0.004 | $0.007 |
| Cached input, per million | $0.015 cached input | – |
| Intelligence Index | 11.3 | 25.7 |
| Spring Prompt overall | – | – |
| Output speed, tokens a second | 164 | 173 |
| Context window | 262,144 tokens | 524,288 tokens |
| Released | 16 Mar 2026 | 15 Jul 2026 (newer) |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Developer based in | France | the US |
Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.
Which is better for what
Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.
| Use case | Mistral Small 4 | Inkling Small |
|---|---|---|
| Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls | 132 of 164 | 71 of 164 |
| Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge | 131 of 198 | 61 of 198 |
| WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality | 116 of 188 | 103 of 188 |
| Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers | not measured | 127 of 152 |
| Speed under pressureGood decisions against a real clock (fast chess) | 9 of 22 | 5 of 22 |
Every shared result
Each model's best result on every measure both have, grouped by benchmark, with the setting that produced it. The headline measures of each benchmark come first; the rest are under "Show all". Green marks the better value; where a source reports ranges that overlap, neither is marked.
| Measure | Mistral Small 4 | Inkling Small |
|---|---|---|
| BulletBench measured by Spring Prompt · 3 results | ||
| Cost per game · Bullet 60sUS dollars, lower is better | $0.0039no reasoning | $0.0075no reasoning |
| Ladder Elo · Bullet 60sladder Elo, higher is better | 367no reasoning | 529no reasoning |
| Ladder Elo · Lightning 10+1ladder Elo, higher is better | 571no reasoning | 571no reasoning |
| Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results | ||
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better | 11.3 | 25.7 |
| GPQA Diamond% of questions, higher is better | 76.9% | 89.5% |
| Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better | 9.9% | 33.3% |
Show all 21 results (15 more)
| Measure | Mistral Small 4 | Inkling Small |
|---|---|---|
| BulletBench measured by Spring Prompt · 7 results | ||
| Cost per game · Lightning 10+1US dollars, lower is better | $0.0041no reasoning | $0.0077no reasoning |
| Games lost on time · Bullet 60s% of games, lower is better | 25.0%no reasoning | 0.0%no reasoning |
| Games lost on time · Lightning 10+1% of games, lower is better | 0.0%no reasoning | 0.0%no reasoning |
| Invalid moves · Bullet 60s% of moves, lower is better | 0.6%no reasoning | 7.2%no reasoning |
| Invalid moves · Lightning 10+1% of moves, lower is better | 1.0%no reasoning | 5.3%no reasoning |
| Median move time · Bullet 60smilliseconds, lower is better | 0.6 sno reasoning | 0.6 sno reasoning |
| Median move time · Lightning 10+1milliseconds, lower is better | 0.6 sno reasoning | 0.6 sno reasoning |
| Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 8 results | ||
| Terminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks, higher is better | 21.0% | 55.1% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0% of tasks, higher is better | 0.0% | 1.0% |
| τ-bench banking% of tasks, higher is better | 4.9% | 18.8% |
| Artificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score, higher is better | 26.6 | 52.9 |
| Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better | 49.7% | 75.7% |
| Output speedtokens per second, higher is better | 164 | 173 |
| SciCode% of problems, higher is better | 38.8% | 49.7% |
| Time to first answer tokenseconds, lower is better | 0.47no reasoning | 13.9 |
Quick answers
Is Mistral Small 4 better than Inkling Small?
Pick Inkling Small if quality matters most: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 25.7 against 11.3). Pick Mistral Small 4 if cost matters more: it costs 48% less per game of bullet chess on BulletBench.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 4 or Inkling Small?
Mistral Small 4 is cheaper to run: $0.004 against $0.007 per game of bullet chess on BulletBench (48% less).
Which is faster, Mistral Small 4 or Inkling Small?
Inkling Small writes about 173 tokens a second on its usual API, against 164 for Mistral Small 4 (Artificial Analysis).
Run Mistral Small 4 and Inkling Small on your own prompt
Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.