DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 vs Inkling Small vs Qwen3.8 27B

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within 2 points (Inkling Small 68/100, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 67/100, Qwen3.8 27B 66/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 for raw capability, Inkling Small on price and Inkling Small for long inputs. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Inkling Small is cheaper at $0.58 input / $1.44 output per million tokens (official Thinking Machines API price). Qwen3.8 27B costs $0.40 input / $2.55 output per million tokens (median across 49 API providers); DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 costs $0.66 input / $1.98 output per million tokens (official DeepSeek API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.795 per million tokens for Inkling Small versus $0.938 for Qwen3.8 27B (1.2× as much) and $0.99 for DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (1.2× as much).

DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 155.9 (#35 of 165), Qwen3.8 27B 151.8 (#54 of 165) and Inkling Small 150.5 (#58 of 165). Their confidence ranges do not overlap (154.2–158.1 vs 149.9–153.6), so the gap is a real one.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813, Inkling Small and Qwen3.8 27B yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

Inkling Small has the largest context window at 1,048,576 tokens, against 1,000,000 for DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 and 262,144 for Qwen3.8 27B. Maximum output per response: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 up to 384,000, Inkling Small up to 1,048,576, Qwen3.8 27B up to 32,768 tokens.

DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 accepts text; Inkling Small accepts text, images and audio; Qwen3.8 27B accepts text, images and video. Inkling Small handles the widest range of inputs.

Yes, all three publish their weights (MIT and Apache-2.0), so you can self-host them.

Qwen3.8 27B is the newest, released Aug 14, 2026. DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 came out Aug 13, 2026; Inkling Small came out Jul 30, 2026.

Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Nov 2, 2026.