Inkling Small pricing, context and benchmark
Inkling Small is an open-weight multimodal mixture-of-experts model from Thinking Machines Lab, with 12B active parameters out of 276B total.
Everything that matters, in one table
Context, pricing, cache, modalities and tooling, from the model registry and Artificial Analysis.
| Model | Inkling Small |
| Model ID | thinkingmachines/inkling-small |
| Provider | Thinkingmachines |
| Release date | 30 July 2026 |
| Status | Generally available |
| Input context | 524,288 tokens |
| Output context | 262,144 tokens |
| Official input pricing | $0.45 per 1M tokens |
| Official output pricing | $1.2 per 1M tokens |
| Cache read pricing | $0.06 per 1M tokens (80% off input) |
| Market input pricing | $0.45 per 1M (cheapest route) |
| Market output pricing | $1.2 per 1M (cheapest route) |
| Input modalities | text · image · audio |
| Output modalities | text |
| Reasoning control | Not exposed |
| Tool support | Text generation only |
| Tokenizer | Other |
| Provider routes | 1 endpoint |
| Artificial Analysis index | 13 (#21 of 26) |
| Speed | 74 tokens/s, 27.28s to first token |
| Knowledge cutoff | Not publicly stated |
Input and output support
| Modality | Input | Output | Billed at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text | ✓ yes | ✓ yes | $0.45 in |
| Image | ✓ yes | no | $0.45 in |
| Audio | ✓ yes | no | $0.45 in |
| Video | no | no | not supported |
| File (PDF) | no | no | not supported |
What is 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...
Inkling Small carries a 524K token window, uses the Other tokenizer and is served by Thinkingmachines. On Hoodgen it sits in the Reasoning tier of the model menu next to its siblings, so you can switch mid conversation without losing the thread.
Release and what changed from the previous version
This is the only release of Inkling Small on OpenRouter, released 30 July 2026. The provider has not published a knowledge cutoff, so treat training data as recent but unconfirmed for very new events.
Features and capabilities
Benchmark results and performance
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5.0.1 blends nine evaluations. Inkling Small scores 13 , ranking #21 of 26.
What can you do with Inkling Small?
Prompt caching and how to cut the bill
Cached input bills at $0.06 per million instead of $0.45, a 80% discount. Keep the system prompt and documents first and the changing question last, so every call hits the cache.
Inkling Small pricing
Official pricing
- $0.06 cached input
- 524K context
- text, image, audio input
- 1 route on OpenRouter
- What Hoodgen routes to first
- Same model, lower bill
Market pricing, every route
| Provider | Tier | Input | Output | Cache read | Uptime 24h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepInfra | standard | $0.45 | $1.2 | $0.1 | 100.0% |
API pricing and cost calculator
| Rate | Per call | Total | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest route | $0.0066 | $3.30 | 3135 |
| List price | $0.0061 | $3.06 | 2907 |
API and developer information
| Model ID | thinkingmachines/inkling-small |
| Endpoint | https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions |
| Parameters | prompt and max_tokens |
| Streaming | Yes, server sent events |
| Modality string | text+image+audio->text |
| Max prompt tokens | 524,288 |
| Max completion tokens | 262,144 |
curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "thinkingmachines/inkling-small",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Summarise this document." }],
"max_tokens": 1024
}'Model limitations
| Text only output | It cannot generate images, audio or video. Pair it with an image model on Hoodgen when you need visuals. |
| Output cap | 262,144 tokens per request. Long deliverables have to be chunked. |
| Knowledge cutoff | The provider does not state a fixed cutoff for every release. Verify very recent events against search. |
Inkling Small vs other Thinkingmachines models
| Model | Context | Input /1M | Output /1M | AA index | Released |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inkling Small | 524K | $0.45 | $1.2 | 13 | 2026 |
Privacy and data policy
- On Hoodgen, prompts and attachments answer that request and stay in your conversation history so you can reopen it. They are not used to train models.
- Requests route through OpenRouter to Thinkingmachines and are covered by that provider's API terms.
- Do not paste secrets or personal data you would not send to any hosted model.
Inkling Small questions, answered
Start chatting with Inkling Small
Free to try on Hoodgen AI, with a live credit estimate before every send. No API key, no setup.