Which is cheaper, Inkling-Small or Phi 4?
As of August 20, 2026, Phi 4 is 86% cheaper on blended LLM API pricing. Phi 4 costs $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens ($0.21 blended 1M-in + 1M-out). Inkling-Small costs $0.30 / $1.20 per million tokens ($1.50 blended). Sources: https://thinkingmachines.ai and https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/openai-service/. The cheapest LLM for your app still depends on how many output tokens you generate.
How much does Inkling-Small vs Phi 4 cost per million tokens?
Inkling-Small Thinking Machines Lab API pricing is $0.30 input and $1.20 output per million tokens via Thinking Machines Lab. Phi 4 Microsoft API pricing is $0.07 input and $0.14 output per million tokens via Microsoft. Use those four numbers, not ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription prices, when you are comparing APIs.
Which is better for coding, Inkling-Small or Phi 4?
Inkling-Small has a published SWE-bench Verified score of 80.2%. Phi 4 does not have that eval on this page yet.
What is the context window for Inkling-Small vs Phi 4?
Inkling-Small supports a 256K token context window, while Phi 4 supports 16K tokens. Inkling-Small offers a larger context window. Filling a larger window bills more input tokens, so the cheaper-per-million model can still cost more on long documents.
Which model performs better on benchmarks, Inkling-Small or Phi 4?
Inkling-Small leads on 5 of 5 shared benchmarks versus Phi 4's 0 wins. Check the comparison table for GPQA Diamond, SWE-bench, MMLU, HLE, and the other evals we track. Token price and benchmark score together are the usual LLM comparison, not either number alone.
Is Inkling-Small or Phi 4 better for production use?
Both Inkling-Small and Phi 4 are production API models. For cost-sensitive production traffic, Phi 4 has better economics on the blended 1M-in + 1M-out scale. For maximum capability, weight the benchmark table for your domain. Many production stacks route cheap models for drafts and a frontier model for the hard turn, which is usually cheaper than sending everything to the expensive API.
Can I switch between Inkling-Small and Phi 4 in my app?
Yes. Call Inkling-Small through Thinking Machines Lab and Phi 4 through Microsoft with separate API keys, or through a gateway that already wraps both. Keep prompts in tokens, not characters, when you estimate the invoice. AnotherWrapper templates can swap providers without rewriting auth and billing.
How accurate is this Inkling-Small vs Phi 4 pricing data?
List rates are the latest published Thinking Machines Lab API pricing and Microsoft API pricing, quoted per million tokens. Official rate sheets: https://thinkingmachines.ai and https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/openai-service/. Prompt caching, batch APIs, and committed-use discounts can change the invoice. Benchmark scores are from official publications and independent evals, updated as new numbers land.
What is the output token limit for Inkling-Small and Phi 4?
Inkling-Small supports up to 256K output tokens per request, while Phi 4 supports up to 16K output tokens. Output tokens are usually the expensive half of API pricing, so a higher max output cap is a capability, not a discount.
Which model has better throughput, Inkling-Small or Phi 4?
Phi 4 has a measured throughput of approximately 33 tokens/second. Throughput data for Inkling-Small is not yet available. Throughput (tokens per second) and time-to-first-token are why two models with the same per-million-token price can still feel different in chat and agents.
How do I switch the models in this Inkling-Small vs Phi 4 comparison?
Use the model pickers at the top of this LLM comparison. Search any model in the index and the URL updates. Open Inkling-Small or Phi 4 from the sidebar for the single-model API pricing page, or go back to the LLM pricing table to sort by cheapest blended cost.
