Thinking Machines: Inkling Small
Analysis Summary
Thinking Machines' Inkling Small combines a 1M-token context with text, image, and audio input, along with tool use and function calling. Its available results show a coding strength, while the intelligence result is more modest and its agentic result is comparatively limited. Listed prices are above those of the lowest-cost options in this batch.
The coding capability and multimodal inputs could support development assistance, code review, and analysis of long mixed-media files. However, the weaker agentic evidence argues against deploying it as an autonomous operator without task-specific testing. It is a specialist candidate for coding and document workflows where its broad input support is useful, rather than a default choice for high-volume or multi-step agent workloads.
Assessed September 23, 2026
Editorial notes
Inkling Small pairs a strong coding result with vision, audio input, tool calling, and a 1M-token context. Its lower reasoning and agentic results, plus higher listed prices than budget tiers, limit its role in autonomous workflows.
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DFO Verdict
Inkling Small pairs a strong coding result with vision, audio input, tool calling, and a 1M-token context. Its lower reasoning and agentic results, plus higher listed prices than budget tiers, limit its role in autonomous workflows.
Benchmarks
Artificial Analysis data refreshed Nov 7, 2026. Arena ratings from the Oct 28, 2026 text leaderboard, with style control.
How Thinking Machines: Inkling Small compares
Thinking Machines: Inkling Small ranks #141 of 447 AI models we track for overall intelligence, #16 of 199 for coding, #37 of 181 for agentic tasks. Its 524K-token context window is larger than 77% of the models we list. At $0.45 per million input tokens it is cheaper than 36% of comparable models.
Dark bar = input · light bar = output, scaled to the priciest peer.
1M tokens ≈ 8 full-length novels or ~2,500 pages of business documents in a single request.
Pricing
| Token Type | Cost per 1M tokens | Cost per 1K tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.45 | $0.000450 |
| Output | $1.20 | $0.001200 |
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A website chatbot handling around 100 customer conversations a day, a few short messages each.
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Talk to our teamAbout Thinking Machines: Inkling Small
Inkling Small is an open-weight multimodal mixture-of-experts model from Thinking Machines Lab, with 12B active parameters out of 276B total. It is positioned as the smaller, more efficient member of..
Frequently asked questions about Thinking Machines: Inkling Small
How much does Thinking Machines: Inkling Small cost?
Thinking Machines: Inkling Small costs $0.45 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens.
What is the context window of Thinking Machines: Inkling Small?
Thinking Machines: Inkling Small has a context window of 524,288 tokens (524K).
Is Thinking Machines: Inkling Small good for coding?
On our coding benchmark index, Thinking Machines: Inkling Small ranks #16 of 199 models, placing it in the top quartile of the field for code generation and debugging.
What can Thinking Machines: Inkling Small do?
Thinking Machines: Inkling Small supports image/vision input, tool use, and function calling.
Who created Thinking Machines: Inkling Small?
Thinking Machines: Inkling Small is developed by Thinking Machines and was released on July 30, 2026.