Inkling Small vs Qwen3.7 Plus vs Qwen3.8 27B

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within a point (Inkling Small 70/100, Qwen3.7 Plus 70/100, Qwen3.8 27B 67/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: Inkling Small for raw capability. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Inkling Small is cheaper at $0.50 input / $1.20 output per million tokens (median across 11 API providers). Qwen3.7 Plus costs $0.40 input / $1.60 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price); Qwen3.8 27B costs $0.40 input / $2.50 output per million tokens (median across 39 API providers). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.675 per million tokens for Inkling Small versus $0.70 for Qwen3.7 Plus (1× as much) and $0.925 for Qwen3.8 27B (1.4× as much).

Inkling Small scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Inkling Small 150.2 (#47 of 148), Qwen3.8 27B 149.4 (#53 of 148) and Qwen3.7 Plus 147.4 (#61 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (147.5–152.1 vs 147.5–151.6), so treat the gap as small.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Inkling Small, Qwen3.7 Plus and Qwen3.8 27B yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Inkling Small 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 Qwen3.7 Plus and 262,144 for Qwen3.8 27B. Maximum output per response: Inkling Small up to 1,048,576, Qwen3.7 Plus up to 64,000, Qwen3.8 27B up to 32,768 tokens.

Inkling Small accepts text, images and audio; Qwen3.7 Plus accepts text, images and video; Qwen3.8 27B accepts text, images and video. They handle the same number of input types.

Inkling Small and Qwen3.8 27B publishes its weights (Apache-2.0) and can be self-hosted; Qwen3.7 Plus is proprietary.

Qwen3.8 27B is the newest, released Aug 14, 2026. Inkling Small came out Jul 30, 2026; Qwen3.7 Plus came out Jun 2, 2026. Knowledge cutoff: Qwen3.7 Plus Apr 2025.

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 Oct 4, 2026.