Inkling
$1.00 per 1M input tokens and $4.05 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 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 | $521 |
| Document Q&A (RAG) 500 questions a day over retrieved documents | $113 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 200 tasks a day, long tool-heavy contexts | $233 |
| Content generation 30 long articles a day | $11.81 |
| Classification / extraction 100,000 short items a day | $1,082 |
Price history
We started tracking Inkling on Oct 21, 2026; the chart appears as soon as there is a second data point. See all recent price changes.
Where to run Inkling: 2 providers
DeepInfra is the cheapest at $0.95 input / $4.05 output per 1M tokens. Uptime is the average over the last 30 days as reported by OpenRouter; see provider reliability.
Cheaper alternatives to Inkling
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro Xiaomi | $0.435 | $0.87 | 1.05M | visionaudiotoolsreasoningJSONopen weights |
| 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 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 DeepSeek | $0.30 | $1.20 | 1.05M | visiontoolsreasoningJSONopen weights |
| GPT-6 Luna OpenAI | $0.10 | $0.50 | 1.05M | visiontoolsreasoningJSON |
How to pay less for Inkling
For a customer chatbot (1,000 conversations a day, 8 turns each) that costs $700 a month at list price without caching:
| Option | Per month | You save |
|---|---|---|
| Move to MiMo-V2.6-Pro (similar capabilities) | $136 | $564 (81%) |
| Use prompt caching (60% of input cached) | $521 | $179 (26%) |
Other workloads: cut-your-bill tool for Inkling.
Specifications
| Model ID | thinkingmachines/inkling |
| Input | text, image, audio |
| Output | text |
| Tool calling | Yes |
| Structured output | No |
| Reasoning mode | Yes |
| Open weights | Yes — thinkingmachines/Inkling |
| Released | Jul 17, 2026 |
FAQ
- How much does Inkling cost?
- $1.00 per million input tokens and $4.05 per million output tokens; cached input costs $0.17 per million. Prices as of Oct 21, 2026.
- What is the context window of Inkling?
- 524K tokens, with up to 472K output tokens per response.
- Does Inkling 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?
- Models with the same key capabilities for at least 20% less include MiMo-V2.6-Pro ($0.435 / $0.87), Claude Haiku 5.5 ($0.10 / $0.50), GLM 5.3 Flash ($0.041 / $0.12).
More from Thinkingmachines: all Thinkingmachines models · how we collect prices