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
MiniMax M3 is MiniMax's open-weight model (about 428B total, 23B active parameters) for coding and agent work, with image and video input. in this catalog it costs twice MiniMax M3.1 Flash, the newer October 2026 release.
pick it if
you need image and video input at $0.30 / $1.20 per million
you want open weights you can also self-host
you reuse long prompts: cache hits bill at a fifth of input
skip it if
MiniMax M3.1 Flash, at half the price, covers your workload
you need JSON-schema constrained output
faq
which is cheaper, Inkling 2 Small or MiniMax M3?
Inkling 2 Small lists the lower output price; input prices match. on a coding-agent session (2M tokens in, 60,000 out) Inkling 2 Small costs $0.66 and MiniMax M3 $0.67.
can i switch between Inkling 2 Small and MiniMax M3 mid-task?
yes. in an octomind session, /model octohub:inkling-2-small and /model octohub:minimax-m3 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.