Thinking Machines · Released Jul 30, 2026Inkling Small
Multimodal MoE reasoning model (276B total, 12B active) for text, image, and audio.
- Capability
- 150.2ECI · #47 of 148
- Input
- $0.50per 1M tokens
- Output
- $1.20per 1M tokens
- Context
- 1.05M1.05M max output
What it costs
- Input
- $0.50per million tokens
- Output
- $1.20per million tokens
- Blended (3:1)
- $0.675cheaper than 54% of priced models
Typical monthly bills
| Monthly usage | Estimated cost |
|---|---|
| Side project2M input + 0.5M output tokens | $1.60 |
| Team assistant25M input + 5M output tokens | $18.50 |
| Production app250M input + 50M output tokens | $185.00 |
Median of 11 paid API providers on models.dev.
Independent benchmarks
#47 of 148 scored models
The shaded band is Epoch AI’s confidence range (147.5–152.1); the tick marks the median scored model.
Scores from Epoch AI, run independently of Thinking Machines.
The details
- Lab
- Thinking Machines
- Released
- Jul 30, 2026
- Context window
- 1,048,576 tokens
- Max output
- 1,048,576 tokens
- Inputs
- Text, Images, Audio
- Output
- Text
- Reasoning
- Always on
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Structured output
- No
- Weights
- Open weights · Apache-2.0
- Availability
- 11 API providerslisted on models.dev
More from Thinking Machines
About Inkling Small
How much does Inkling Small cost?
Inkling Small costs $0.50 input / $1.20 output per million tokens (median across 11 API providers). At a 3:1 input-to-output mix that is $0.675 per million tokens, cheaper than 54% of the 360 priced models we track.
What is the context window of Inkling Small?
Inkling Small accepts up to 1,048,576 tokens per request and can write up to 1,048,576 tokens in one response.
How good is Inkling Small?
Epoch AI gives Inkling Small a Capabilities Index score of 150.2 (likely range 147.5–152.1), ranking it #47 of 148 models Epoch has scored. Epoch AI benchmark results: GPQA Diamond 88.5%, FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 46.3%, OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025 90.0%, SimpleQA Verified 19.1%.
Is Inkling Small open source?
Yes. Thinking Machines publishes the weights under the Apache-2.0 licence, so it can be downloaded and self-hosted.
What inputs does Inkling Small support?
Inkling Small accepts text, images and audio and replies in text. It is a reasoning model, supports tool calling.
When was Inkling Small released?
Thinking Machines released Inkling Small on Jul 30, 2026.
What are the best alternatives to Inkling Small?
The closest current models from other labs on capability, price and release date are Qwen3.8 27B (Alibaba (Qwen), ECI 149.4, $0.40 / $2.50), MiniMax-M3 (MiniMax, ECI 147.0, $0.30 / $1.20), Kimi K2.7 Code (Moonshot AI, ECI 150.0, $0.95 / $4.00) and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite (Google, ECI 145.1, $0.30 / $2.50).