The AI arena is free today

Open Superagent

Inkling 2 Small vs Phi-3.5-vision-instruct

Inkling 2 Small leads the LLM Stats Score 47.1 to -3.7.

Thinking Machines Lab · Microsoft · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Inkling 2 Small leads the overall LLM Stats Score 47.1 to -3.7, ranking #41 overall.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Inkling 2 Small

  • overall performance matters — it scores 47.1 and ranks #41 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Nov 2026

Choose Phi-3.5-vision-instruct

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Inkling 2 Small
Thinking Machines Lab
Phi-3.5-vision-instruct
Microsoft
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
47.1
#41
-3.7
#390
Reasoning
47.8
#26
-5.3
#388
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.30 / M
— / M
Output price
$1.00 / M
— / M
Context window
256,000
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

2 shared
Index
Inkling 2 Small
Phi-3.5-vision-instruct
Vision
29.2#47
-3.7#228
Multimodal
28.9#44
-1.3#184
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

11 reported for Inkling 2 Small · 9 for Phi-3.5-vision-instruct

No common benchmarks found

Inkling 2 Small and Phi-3.5-vision-instructdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

589.8B diff

Inkling 2 Small has 589.8B more parameters than Phi-3.5-vision-instruct, making it 14042.9% larger.

Thinking Machines Lab
Inkling 2 Small
594.0Bparameters
Microsoft
Phi-3.5-vision-instruct
4.2Bparameters
594.0B
Inkling 2 Small
4.2B
Phi-3.5-vision-instruct

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Inkling 2 Small specifies input context (256,000 tokens).

Thinking Machines Lab
Inkling 2 Small
Input256,000 tokens
Output- tokens
Microsoft
Phi-3.5-vision-instruct
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Wed Nov 11 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Both Inkling 2 Small and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct support multimodal inputs.

They are both capable of processing various types of data, offering versatility in application.

Inkling 2 Small

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Phi-3.5-vision-instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Inkling 2 Small is licensed under a proprietary license, while Phi-3.5-vision-instruct uses MIT.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Inkling 2 Small

Proprietary

Closed source

Phi-3.5-vision-instruct

MIT

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Inkling 2 Small was released on 2026-11-05, while Phi-3.5-vision-instruct was released on 2024-08-23.

Inkling 2 Small is 27 months newer than Phi-3.5-vision-instruct.

Inkling 2 Small

Nov 5, 2026

5 days ago

2.2yr newer
Phi-3.5-vision-instruct

Aug 23, 2024

2.2 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Inkling 2 Small and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Inkling 2 Small
✓ Preferred
Phi-3.5-vision-instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Inkling 2 Small vs Phi-3.5-vision-instruct.

Which is better, Inkling 2 Small or Phi-3.5-vision-instruct?

Inkling 2 Small leads the LLM Stats Score 47.1 to -3.7. Inkling 2 Small is made by Thinking Machines Lab and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct is made by Microsoft. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Inkling 2 Small compare to Phi-3.5-vision-instruct in benchmarks?

Inkling 2 Small scores GPQA: 93.0%, BrowseComp: 90.2%, CharXiv-R: 85.6%, MCP Atlas: 85.0%, SWE-Bench Verified: 82.2%. Phi-3.5-vision-instruct scores ScienceQA: 91.3%, POPE: 86.1%, MMBench: 81.9%, ChartQA: 81.8%, AI2D: 78.1%.

What are the context window sizes for Inkling 2 Small and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct?

Inkling 2 Small supports 256K tokens and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Inkling 2 Small and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (47.1 vs -3.7), licensing (Proprietary vs MIT). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Inkling 2 Small and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct?

Inkling 2 Small is developed by Thinking Machines Lab and Phi-3.5-vision-instruct is developed by Microsoft.

Related comparisons