Inkling Small
$0.45 per 1M input tokens and $1.20 per 1M output tokens · 524K context · vision, audio, tools, reasoning, open weights.
Prices checked Oct 21, 2026 · tracked by LLM Cost Index since Oct 21, 2026
What Inkling Small costs per month
Estimated monthly bill for typical workloads, using the cached-input price for repeated context. Try your own numbers in the cost calculator.
| Workload | Per month |
|---|---|
| Customer chatbot 1,000 conversations a day, 8 turns each | $187 |
| Document Q&A (RAG) 500 questions a day over retrieved documents | $46.35 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 200 tasks a day, long tool-heavy contexts | $96.30 |
| Content generation 30 long articles a day | $3.92 |
| Classification / extraction 100,000 short items a day | $459 |
Price history
We started tracking Inkling Small on Oct 21, 2026; the chart appears as soon as there is a second data point. See all recent price changes.
Cheaper alternatives to Inkling Small
Models with the same tool calling, image input for at least 20% less (3:1 input/output mix), most capable first.
| Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Context | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 5.5 Anthropic | $0.10 | $0.50 | 1M | visiontoolsreasoningJSON |
| GLM 5.3 Flash Z.ai | $0.041 | $0.12 | 1.05M | visiontoolsreasoningJSONopen weights |
| GPT-6 Luna OpenAI | $0.10 | $0.50 | 1.05M | visiontoolsreasoningJSON |
| MiMo-V2.6-Flash Xiaomi | $0.14 | $0.28 | 1.05M | visionaudiotoolsreasoningJSONopen weights |
| GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI | $0.20 | $1.20 | 1.05M | visiontoolsreasoningJSON |
How to pay less for Inkling Small
For a customer chatbot (1,000 conversations a day, 8 turns each) that costs $263 a month at list price without caching:
| Option | Per month | You save |
|---|---|---|
| Move to Claude Haiku 5.5 (similar capabilities) | $58.56 | $204 (78%) |
| Use prompt caching (60% of input cached) | $187 | $75.60 (29%) |
Other workloads: cut-your-bill tool for Inkling Small.
Specifications
| Model ID | thinkingmachines/inkling-small |
| Input | text, image, audio |
| Output | text |
| Tool calling | Yes |
| Structured output | No |
| Reasoning mode | Yes |
| Open weights | Yes — thinkingmachines/Inkling-Small |
| Released | Jul 30, 2026 |
FAQ
- How much does Inkling Small cost?
- $0.45 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; cached input costs $0.10 per million. Prices as of Oct 21, 2026.
- What is the context window of Inkling Small?
- 524K tokens, with up to 262K output tokens per response.
- Does Inkling Small support images, tools and structured output?
- Images as input: yes. Tool calling: yes. Structured (JSON) output: no. Reasoning mode: yes.
- What are cheaper alternatives to Inkling Small?
- Models with the same key capabilities for at least 20% less include Claude Haiku 5.5 ($0.10 / $0.50), GLM 5.3 Flash ($0.041 / $0.12), GPT-6 Luna ($0.10 / $0.50).
More from Thinkingmachines: all Thinkingmachines models · how we collect prices