Inkling 2 Small is Thinking Machines' second-generation 594B-total, 17B-active mixture-of-experts model with image input. its weights are closed for now; the lab plans an Apache 2.0 release. on octomind it is served only through Tinker.
pick it if
want the lowest-priced Inkling on octomind, below Inkling Small on both input and output
need adjustable reasoning effort, with chain-of-thought you can switch off
work on long agent runs: the lab trained it with a 256K window plus compaction
skip it if
you need open weights today; the lab has not released them yet
you need audio input; Inkling 2 Small takes text and images only
the first natively multimodal model in Zhipu AI's GLM-5 series, an open-weights 320B-total, 18B-active sibling of GLM-5.3. it costs about a ninth of GLM-5.3's per-token rate and, unlike GLM-5.3, accepts image and video input.
pick it if
you want GLM-5.3-family text at roughly a ninth of the price
you need image or video input in the GLM line
you want MIT-licensed weights you can self-host
skip it if
you need replies without thinking; Z.ai says thinking cannot be disabled
faq
which is better, Inkling 2 Small or GLM-5.3 Flash?
on DeepSWE v1.1, as each maker reports it, Inkling 2 Small scores 72.1% and GLM-5.3 Flash 63.4. these are each maker's own numbers, not a controlled head-to-head; the spec table lists every benchmark both publish.
which is cheaper, Inkling 2 Small or GLM-5.3 Flash?
GLM-5.3 Flash lists lower input and output prices. on a coding-agent session (2M tokens in, 60,000 out) Inkling 2 Small costs $0.66 and GLM-5.3 Flash $0.33.
can i switch between Inkling 2 Small and GLM-5.3 Flash mid-task?
yes. in an octomind session, /model octohub:inkling-2-small and /model octohub:glm-5.3-flash switch models without losing the conversation, so you can draft on one and review on the other.
try either model
switch between models inside the same octomind session.