# Cohere Chat API (Command models) vs Inkling 2 Small (slim)

> Cohere Chat scores 65.6 (B) to Inkling 2 Small's 52.1 (D) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-chat-vs-inkling-2-small.md (~6,200 tokens) · this version ~2,830 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-chat-vs-inkling-2-small.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-chat-vs-inkling-2-small
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-06
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Cohere Chat API (Command models) scores 65.6 (B) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 52.1 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do llm inference.

- Cohere Chat API (Command models): B 65.6, rank #372 of 1354 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cohere-chat.min.md
- Inkling 2 Small: D 52.1, rank #899 of 1354 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inkling-2-small.min.md
- Cohere Chat API (Command models), good for Teams that want Command models for RAG with citations, tool use and multilingual work, and that may later move to a private deployment or Model Vault. Ahead on Reliability, 67 against 30; Schema & documentation, 84 against 70; Agent ergonomics, 72 against 62; Payments & pricing, 35 against 20; Transparency & trust, 75 against 64. Also Free to start without a card.
- Inkling 2 Small, good for Developers who want a capable multimodal open-family model through an OpenAI-compatible API today, or to fine-tune it on Tinker, and who can live with a beta surface until the weights are published.

| Category | Cohere Chat API (Command models) | Inkling 2 Small |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 67 | 30 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 84 | 70 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 72 | 62 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 55 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 35 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 72 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 75 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cohere Chat API (Command models) | Inkling 2 Small |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cohere | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.cohere.com/v2/chat` | `https://tinker.thinkingmachines.dev/services/tinker-prod/oai/api/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Cohere's Commercial SaaS Agreement. The SDKs are MIT | Proprietary for now, used through Tinker under the Tinker Terms of Use and Thinking Machines' Model Acceptable Use Policy, per the model card. Thinking Machines says it will publish the weights under Apache 2.0 the week after launch, once outside safety testing is done |
| Last release | 2026-09-09 | 2026-11-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-04-08 | not read yet |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-01 | not read yet |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Cohere Chat API (Command models) +37: Cohere Chat API (Command models) 67 (Hosted lines. status.cohere.com (incident.io) lists each Command model and the endpoints as components (20). Its feed, read on 2 November 2026, shows two incidents in the 90 days from 4 August. 'Multiple Endpoint Disruptions' on 1 September 2026, from 15:41 to 19:47 UTC, degraded the embeddings endpoint, embed-v4.0, two rerank models and `command-a-reasoning-08-2025` during a Google Cloud outage, rated minor and partial, and docs loading failed on 5 August. Nothing has been posted since 1 September, so minor incidents only (20). Chat limits are published per model, 20 requests a minute and 1,000 calls a month on a trial key and 500 a minute on a production key for Command A, R, R+ and R7B, while the four newest variants say contact sales (12 of 15). The errors page documents 429 with example messages that say to wait and try again later and links to the rate limits, with no Retry-After header, backoff timing or idempotency key, the reading cohere-embed takes of the same page (8 of 15). cohere.com/slo is titled Service Level Objective and its text is script-drawn, so it was unread and scores as absent (0). The v2 chat endpoint is the default docs version, but the sample response on the chat guide still carries `is_experimental` and the newest models are not open to production keys (7 of 10).); Inkling 2 Small 30 (Model reading, for the surface it's called on, Tinker's serverless inference and OpenAI-compatible API. No status page found, per the tinker listing's checks of 1 October and 4 November (0), so no readable incident history (5). The only published limit is the in-flight sample cap of 2,000, per the tinker listing's 1 October check; the OpenAI-compatible page gives no numbers and says higher or more stable throughput needs the waitlist (10). The SDK retries sampling with stable request IDs, per the tinker listing's reading of the SDK repository; the OpenAI-compatible page has no retry guidance (15). No SLA found (0). Serverless inference is 'currently in beta' on the models and pricing page and the OpenAI-compatible API is labelled Beta, read 6 November (0). 0 + 5 + 10 + 15 + 0 + 0 = 30.)
- Payments & pricing, Cohere Chat API (Command models) +15: Cohere Chat API (Command models) 35 (No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs, the OpenAPI file or the pricing page (0). The docs say Command models are billed per input and output token. The pricing page, read on 2 November 2026, now carries per-unit prices in its own page data, Command R at $0.15 input and $0.60 output and Command R7B at $0.0375 and $0.15 per million tokens, with Command R+ 08-2024 at $2.50 and $10.00 among legacy prices and Command A+ shown as free. No price is published for Command A, Reasoning, Vision or Translate, so the line takes 15 rather than the full 20 (15 of 20). A trial key is created at sign-up and is free with no card (20). Sign-up is in a browser, and a production key needs an Owner to complete a Go to Production form (0).); Inkling 2 Small 20 (Published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Per-million-token prices for serverless inference and training published without a login on 6 November (20). No free tier listed, and the quickstart asks for payment details before training, per the tinker listing (0). Sign-up is a browser flow (0). 0 + 20 + 0 + 0 = 20.)
- Schema & documentation, Cohere Chat API (Command models) +14: Cohere Chat API (Command models) 84 (Model reading. Public OpenAPI 3.1 file `cohere-openapi.yaml` in cohere-ai/cohere-developer-experience, 43 operations, last changed 29 September 2026 (25). docs.cohere.com/llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page by adding `.md`, though the llms.txt files list no pages (8 of 10). The v2 chat operation describes each of its 21 request fields with defaults and limits, and says less about when to prefer one option (16 of 20). Enums on `tool_choice`, `safety_mode` and `thinking.type`, numeric bounds on `temperature`, `k`, `p` and `priority`, with penalties bounded only in prose (12 of 15). Eight request examples on the operation and an errors page with sample messages for each status code, with error bodies carrying a message and no machine code (12 of 15). v1 and v2 live side by side in the path and the changelog is dated, but the OpenAPI file is version 1.0 throughout and its changes are committed as 'Add spec changes' with no per-change note (11 of 15).); Inkling 2 Small 70 (Model reading. No OpenAPI file of its own; the OpenAI-compatible chat and completions endpoints and the typed Python SDK are the contract, as the tinker listing reads it (15). llms.txt on the docs host, per the tinker listing's 1 October check (10). The model card states intended use (agentic and tool-use systems, coding assistants, chatbots, RAG), inputs, outputs and limitations, and the launch post its benchmarks (16 of 20). Model IDs, context lengths and the reasoning_effort values (none to xhigh, or 0.0 to 0.99) are documented; the tool-call format and structured output aren't, for this model (8 of 15). A Python example and an HTTP 400 for models without reasoning_effort, with no error page (6 of 15). A dated Tinker changelog and a model deprecations page, per the tinker listing (15). 15 + 10 + 16 + 8 + 6 + 15 = 70.)
- Transparency & trust, Cohere Chat API (Command models) +11: Cohere Chat API (Command models) 75 (Closed service under a published SaaS agreement, MIT SDKs, and the docs say Command A+ weights are on Hugging Face under Apache 2.0, which we did not open (15 of 30). The Enterprise Data Commitments (5 December 2025) and the privacy policy (1 May 2026) agree on 30-day retention and a training opt-out. The SaaS agreement (8 April 2025) does not mention the opt-out and grants an irrevocable right to use and share API data, and the DPA is sent on request (16 of 30). Deprecations page with dated history back to 2024 and lifecycle terms, no minimum notice, and nothing newer than 4 April 2026 on 2 November, read at 15 as cohere-embed reads the same page (15 of 20). The trust centre names nine sub-processors with a location for each, all in the US, and Google Cloud US-Central as the data location, read at 20 as cohere-embed reads the same list (20 of 20).); Inkling 2 Small 64 (Editorial half. Closed for now under the Tinker Terms of Use and the Model Acceptable Use Policy, per the model card, with Apache 2.0 weights promised the week after launch (15). Terms commit not to use Customer Content for training, keep it only as needed, with a DPA and deletion on request; the privacy notice wasn't re-read, per the tinker listing (15). Dated deprecation notices with no stated period (15). The DPA annex names Google Cloud, Cloudflare, WorkOS and OpenAI with service and location (15). 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 60.)
- Agent ergonomics, Cohere Chat API (Command models) +10: Cohere Chat API (Command models) 72 (Model reading. Function calling with `tool_choice` REQUIRED or NONE and `strict_tools`, which the reference marks beta (17 of 20). `response_format` takes `json_object` or a JSON Schema, with limits documented and no support in RAG mode (13 of 15). The usage object reports `cached_tokens`, and no guide or price for prompt caching was found (5 of 15). Context is 256,000 tokens on Command A and Command A Reasoning and 128,000 on Command A+ (10 of 15). `/v2/batches` runs a batch from an uploaded dataset, with no price or discount found (6 of 10). Official SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Java and Go (10). Error messages are specific and readable, with no stable error codes (11 of 15).); Inkling 2 Small 62 (Model reading (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs). A 256K served context, max_tokens and a priced cache at $0.03 per million; tool use isn't documented for this model (15 of 25). Output-size controls through max_tokens, reasoning_effort and separate_reasoning (15 of 20). One documented error, the 400 for unsupported reasoning_effort (5 of 20). Stable request IDs make SDK sampling retries safe, per the tinker listing (15 of 20). OpenAI's SDKs work against the endpoint, with Tinker's Python SDK besides, and reasoning defaults to 0.9 (12 of 15). 15 + 15 + 5 + 15 + 12 = 62.)