How much does Inkling Small cost per million tokens?

Inkling Small costs $0.45 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens at list price, and $0.1 per million cached input tokens.

What is the context window of Inkling Small?

Inkling Small accepts up to 524,288 tokens of context and returns up to 262,144 output tokens.

How much do 1,000 chat messages cost with Inkling Small?

About $1.05, assuming 1,000 input + 500 output tokens per message.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Inkling Small?

In the same price range, OpenAI GPT-6 Luna Pro ($0.1 / $0.5), OpenAI GPT-6 Luna ($0.1 / $0.5), Qwen Qwen3.8 Omni Flash ($0.15 / $0.47) cost less per token. Quality differs: test on your own prompts.

Where can I buy Thinking Machines API credits for less?

Discount credit books resell OpenRouter usage below face value within their depth, OpenRouter adds a 5.5% card fee, and Thinking Machines sells its own credits at face value. The live table on this page ranks them for $100 of usage.

Thinking Machines · live price

Inkling Small API pricing

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...

Small and cheap (under $1 per 1M)Tool callingReasoningimage inputaudio input

Input: $0.45; per 1M tokens
Output: $1.20; per 1M tokens
Cached input: $0.1; per 1M tokens
Context: 524K; 262K max output

List price from OpenRouter, which passes Thinking Machines's price through without markup. Refreshed hourly. Released July 30, 2026. Model id thinkingmachines/inkling-small.

What Inkling Small costs in practice

At list price, before any batch or caching discount.

1,000 chat messages

$1.05

1,000 input + 500 output tokens each

1,000 RAG questions

$4.20

8,000 input + 500 output tokens each

100 coding-agent steps

$1.59

30,000 input + 2,000 output tokens each, no caching

Inkling Small price history

No price change since we started tracking on 2026-10-01. We record prices daily; changes will show here.

Inkling Small price by host

One host serves this model through OpenRouter.

DeepInfra$0.45 in · $1.20 out · 524K ctx · 100.0% uptime 24h

Where to buy Thinking Machines credits for less

Inkling Small costs the same per token everywhere it's sold through OpenRouter. What changes is the price of the credits. Live quotes for $100 of usage:

#	Where you buy	You payYou pay for $100.00 of usage	vs list price	Price source
1	OrbioCardCheapest right now Credits from a discount book, plus a 5% platform fee and card processing, both included in the quote.	$85.10 incl. $2.60 card processing	-14.9%	live quote
2	smaaartCard Credits from a discount book, plus a 5% platform fee on face value. Card processing and taxes shown at checkout.	$95.00 + card processing and tax at checkout (not in this number)	-5.0%	live quote
3	Direct from the labCard Prepaid credits at face value (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google…). Taxes may apply.	$100.00 no top-up fee	list price	face value
4	OpenRouterCrypto 5% on crypto purchases. No markup on model prices.	$105.00 fees included	+5.0%	published fee
5	OpenRouterCard 5.5% on card purchases, $0.80 minimum. No markup on model prices.	$105.50 fees included	+5.5%	published fee

Disclosure: this site is run by the team behind smaaart, one of the options compared. Tables are ranked by price only, from live quotes and published fees, including when smaaart isn't first. How we compare

Inkling Small cost calculator

Enter your monthly tokens to price your own usage.

Model$0.45 in / $1.20 out per 1M tokens · list price, liveInput tokens / month (millions)Output tokens / month (millions)

Usage at list price$34.50/ month(quotes below are for $35.00: purchases run from $5.00 to $10,000.00)

Cheaper alternatives to Inkling Small

Other labs' models in the same price range or the one below, cheaper per token.

Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Blended 3:1	Context
OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna Pro	$0.1	$0.5	$0.2	1.1M
OpenAI: GPT-6 Luna	$0.1	$0.5	$0.2	1.1M
Qwen: Qwen3.8 Omni Flash	$0.15	$0.47	$0.23	1M
Z.ai: GLM 5.3 FlashX	$0.37	$1.25	$0.59	1.0M
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash	$0.03	$0.5	$0.147	1.0M
Qwen: Qwen3.8 Flash	$0.15	$0.47	$0.23	1M

Other Thinking Machines models

Model	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Blended 3:1	Context
Inkling	$1	$4.05	$1.76	524K

All Thinking Machines API prices