Compare / Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs Ling-mini-2.0
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker vs Ling-mini-2.0
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker scores higher on the Small LM Index: 63.3 vs 43.0. On the 7 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 7 and Ling-mini-2.0 wins 0. Both need about 11.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you need math and reasoning
- you need precise instruction following
- you build agents that call tools
- you work with long documents
- you need image input
Pick Ling-mini-2.0 if…
No clear advantage in the data we have.
Specifications
| Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | Ling-mini-2.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 63.3 (likely 61–65) | 43.0 (likely 40–46) |
| Lab | ServiceNow (Apriel) · United States | InclusionAI (Ling) · China |
| Released | 2025-12-04 | 2025-09-09 |
| Parameters | 14.9B (dense) | 16.3B (1.4B active, MoE) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~11.4 GB | ~11 GB |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Input | text, image | text |
| Reasoning | Always thinks | No thinking |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 1.3K | 4.6K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker | Ling-mini-2.0 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 79.0✓ | 67.1✓ |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 73.3✓ | 56.2✓ |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 10.8✓ | 5.1✓ |
| AIME Math | 88.0✓ | 49.3✓ |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 80.7✓ | 42.9✓ |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 14.0 | — |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | 69.3✓ | 13.2✓ |
| IFBench Instruction following | 69.1✓ | 23.6✓ |
| MMMU-Pro Vision | 60.3 | — |
| BFCL Agentic | 63.5 | — |
| AA-LCR Long context | 50.0 | — |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker or Ling-mini-2.0?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker scores higher on the Small LM Index: 63.3 vs 43.0. On the 7 benchmarks both labs report, Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker wins 7 and Ling-mini-2.0 wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 11.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker has the longer context window: 262K tokens against 128K.
Can I use Apriel 1.6 15B Thinker and Ling-mini-2.0 commercially?
Both are released under the MIT license. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.