GPT-6 Astra vs Inkling-Small: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
GPT-6 Astra is developed by OpenAI, while Inkling-Small comes from Thinking Machines Lab. Inkling-Small was released in July 2026, and GPT-6 Astra followed 2 months later in September 2026. Inkling-Small has a published size of about 276 billion parameters; OpenAI has not disclosed the parameter count of GPT-6 Astra.
The two models share 4 published benchmarks. GPT-6 Astra leads on 4 of them. The widest gaps are on ARC-AGI v2, where GPT-6 Astra scores 95.0% against 40.1%; ARC-AGI, where GPT-6 Astra scores 98.5% against 84.0%. Averaged across everything we track, GPT-6 Astra sits at 74.4% and Inkling-Small at 60.3%.
Inkling-Small is the cheaper API at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens, roughly 33 times cheaper than GPT-6 Astra at $10 and $50. GPT-6 Astra takes the larger context window at 1M tokens, compared with 256K for Inkling-Small. GPT-6 Astra accepts text and images as input, while Inkling-Small accepts text, images, and audio. On tooling, only GPT-6 Astra supports function calling and only GPT-6 Astra offers structured output.
| Characteristic | GPT-6 Astra | Inkling-Small |
|---|---|---|
| Company | OpenAI | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Release Date | September 4, 2026 | July 30, 2026 |
| Parameters | — | 276B |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Context (input) | 1.1M | 256K |
| Context (output) | 128K | 256K |
| Input Price / 1M | $10.00 | $0.30 |
| Output Price / 1M | $50.00 | $1.20 |
| Average Score | 74.4% | 60.3% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| ARC-AGI v2 | 95.0% | 40.1% |
| ARC-AGI | 98.5% | 84.0% |
| BrowseComp | 91.5% | 77.4% |
| GPQA Diamond | 96.0% | 89.5% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
GPT-6 Astra leads in 2 out of 4 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: GPT-6 Astra — 0.7, Inkling-Small — 0.6.
Inkling-Small is 40.0x cheaper: input $0.30/1M vs $10.00/1M tokens.
GPT-6 Astra supports a larger context: 1M vs 256K tokens.
GPT-6 Astra is newer: released 9/4/2026 vs 7/30/2026.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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The GPT-6 Astra and Inkling-Small comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the GPT-6 Astra or Inkling-Small page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.