As of August 20, 2026, Inkling-Small and MiniMax M2.5 have the same blended API cost at $1.50 per 1 million input plus 1 million output tokens. Inkling-Small is $0.30 / $1.20 per million tokens versus MiniMax M2.5 at $0.30 / $1.20. Sources: https://thinkingmachines.ai and https://anotherwrapper.com/tools/llm-pricing
Sources: Thinking Machines Lab pricing (https://thinkingmachines.ai); AnotherWrapper LLM pricing (https://anotherwrapper.com/tools/llm-pricing)
Inkling-Small
Thinking Machines
Input
$0.30
Output
$1.20
MiniMax M2.5
MiniMax
Input
$0.30
Output
$1.20
Token pricing, specs, and benchmarks side by side
Inkling-SmallMiniMax M2.5Verdict
Inkling-Small offers both lower pricing and stronger benchmark performance across the board, making it the clear value leader in this comparison.
As of August 20, 2026, Inkling-Small is 0% cheaper on blended LLM API pricing. Inkling-Small costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens ($1.50 blended 1M-in + 1M-out). MiniMax M2.5 costs $0.30 / $1.20 per million tokens ($1.50 blended). Sources: https://thinkingmachines.ai and https://anotherwrapper.com/tools/llm-pricing. The cheapest LLM for your app still depends on how many output tokens you generate.
Inkling-Small Thinking Machines Lab API pricing is $0.30 input and $1.20 output per million tokens via Thinking Machines Lab. MiniMax M2.5 MiniMax API pricing is $0.30 input and $1.20 output per million tokens via MiniMax. Use those four numbers, not ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription prices, when you are comparing APIs.
Inkling-Small and MiniMax M2.5 are tied on SWE-bench Verified at 80.2%.
Inkling-Small supports a 256K token context window, while MiniMax M2.5 supports 1M tokens. MiniMax M2.5 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.
Inkling-Small leads on 12 of 12 shared benchmarks versus MiniMax M2.5'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.
Both Inkling-Small and MiniMax M2.5 are production API models. For cost-sensitive production traffic, Inkling-Small 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.
Yes. Call Inkling-Small through Thinking Machines Lab and MiniMax M2.5 through MiniMax 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.
List rates are the latest published Thinking Machines Lab API pricing and MiniMax API pricing, quoted per million tokens. Official rate sheets: https://thinkingmachines.ai and https://anotherwrapper.com/tools/llm-pricing. 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.
Inkling-Small supports up to 256K output tokens per request, while MiniMax M2.5 supports up to 1M output tokens. Output tokens are usually the expensive half of API pricing, so a higher max output cap is a capability, not a discount.
MiniMax M2.5 has a measured throughput of approximately 100 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.
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 MiniMax M2.5 from the sidebar for the single-model API pricing page, or go back to the LLM pricing table to sort by cheapest blended cost.
This comparison covers API pricing, context window, throughput, and benchmark scores. Inkling-Small costs $0.30/M input and $1.20/M output via Thinking Machines Lab. MiniMax M2.5 costs $0.30/M input and $1.20/M output.
Rank both on the LLM leaderboard, SWE-bench, and Humanity's Last Exam.
The index
280 models across 33 providers. Search or jump to a lab — every model page stays linked here.
Next step
Auth, billing, and the API layer are already decided. Fork 8 finished AI apps, or have us build the first version with you.
