Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Cosmos-Reason2-2B vs Inkling 2 Small

Cosmos-Reason2-2B and Inkling 2 Small score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 59.5 (C) and 58.8 (C). Inkling 2 Small leads on risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6472 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Cosmos-Reason2-2B C

Best for Agents that need a small local model to reason over camera footage and images for robotics, driving or smart spaces

Ahead on

  • Reach, 65 against 40

Watch for

Gated behind a click-through licence that needs a Hugging Face account

Inkling 2 Small C

Best for Teams with 512 GB or more of datacentre GPU memory who want Thinking Machines' newest open multimodal agent model and can run a runtime's pre-release image.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 65 against 60
  • Agent interface, 85 against 65
  • Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 39

Watch for

The smaller checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and Thinking Machines says 500 GB of GPU memory

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Documentation and upkeep Inkling 2 Small +28

Cosmos-Reason2-2B 39

The card misses languages and a cut-off (14). Training data is named by dataset without sizes or a cut-off (5). The Hub repository last changed on 30 April 2026, 188 days before this check, which alone gives 5. NVIDIA's GitHub repository last changed with a README redirect to Cosmos 3 on 7 June 2026, 150 days back, and this run counts the publisher's documentation commits on this line (10). None of its 3 discussions has an NVIDIA reply, counted by author flags on 4 November (0). The 2B's weights were replaced in place in March with a dated line, and the family is now superseded by Cosmos 3 with a dated note (5). The gated files couldn't be checked against the card, which itself mixes float16 and BF16 and links a newer licence than the gate shows (5). 14 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 39.

Inkling 2 Small 67

Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off. Training data 15, an EU training-content summary with sources, mix, an October 2026 collection cut-off and filtering. Last change 20, the files were uploaded on 12 November 2026. Responsiveness 0, the repository has no questions yet, which reads as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 10, the files agree and no broken-file report waits. 17 + 15 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 67.

Reach Cosmos-Reason2-2B +25

Cosmos-Reason2-2B 65

Memory earns the full 30 because the BF16 file is 4.9 GB, about 5.9 GB with the fifth added, though NVIDIA itself asks for 24 GB of GPU memory. Runtimes get 20 because the model keeps Qwen3-VL's architecture, which Transformers, vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp run in released versions, while LM Studio's catalogue has only the base. Builds score 0, as NVIDIA publishes no quantised build of the 2B. The NVIDIA Open Model License allows free commercial use under a use policy (10). The gate is an automatic click-through that needs an account (5), and nothing hosts the 2B (0).

Inkling 2 Small 40

Memory 0 of 30, the smallest build is Thinking Machines' NVFP4 checkpoint at 393.5 GB, about 472 GB with a fifth added, above the 256 GB line. Runtimes 0, no released version of the six runs it; vLLM and SGLang serve it from their own images and Transformers has it on its main branch only. Builds 15, two precisions from the publisher (NVFP4 and MXFP8). Terms 10, Apache 2.0 with a binding acceptable use policy on top, read as a custom licence. Download 10, no gate. Hosted 5, Thinking Machines' own Tinker serves it as beta serverless inference, and Together is live on Hugging Face. 0 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 40.

Agent interface Inkling 2 Small +20

Cosmos-Reason2-2B 65

A Jinja template ships as chat_template.json (20). Tools are declared only by the template it inherits from Qwen3-VL, with no NVIDIA documentation or parser (10), and nothing shows the 2B was trained for tool use (0). NVIDIA's prompt files ask for JSON with named keys for boxes, events and trajectories (15). Reasoning is asked for in the prompt and vLLM's qwen3 parser returns it apart (10). The card states 256K input tokens (10).

Inkling 2 Small 85

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Thinking Machines' tml-renderers guide shows how tools are declared and how calls come back for this model, and its package ships the parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 10, thinking effort is set per request from none to xhigh, and the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content. Context 10, up to 1M tokens. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

Risk Inkling 2 Small +5

Cosmos-Reason2-2B 60

File safety gets the full 25, one safetensors file loaded by Transformers' own code with a template, no remote code. Provenance gets 15 for files in NVIDIA's own organisation with hashes. The licence has a use policy and guardrail clause and NVIDIA can revoke or update it, so licence risk keeps 5 of 15. NVIDIA's PSIRT route and bulletins give the security programme 10. Agent guidance gets 5 for general cautions about guardrails and physical risk, and safety evaluation 0, with no safety results.

Inkling 2 Small 65

File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code to run. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation Thinking Machines links to, with a SHA-256 on every LFS file. Safety evaluation 10, Thinking Machines' own StrongREJECT, FORTRESS, HoneyBench and DistressBench results and described outside red-teaming, but nothing an outside party published or a harness to rerun. Agent guidance 5, the card names safeguards to add but doesn't say what its refusals cover, with nothing on prompt injection. Licence risk 5, 10 off for a use policy that reaches beyond the law and that can change at any time. Security programme 5, a security.txt and a disclosure policy, with public advisories unchecked and scored as absent. 25 + 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 65.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCosmos-Reason2-2BInkling 2 SmallEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256540Cosmos-Reason2-2B +25
Risk20%206065Inkling 2 Small +5
Agent interface10%106585Inkling 2 Small +20
Documentation and upkeep10%103967Inkling 2 Small +28
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59.5/100C 58.8/100

Facts side by side

FactCosmos-Reason2-2BInkling 2 Small
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorNVIDIAThinking Machines Lab
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceNVIDIA Open Model License (custom, commercial use allowed, not an OSI licence); built on Qwen3-VL-2B-Instruct under Apache 2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-03-102026-11-12
Terms last updated2025-10-24no document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train modelsyesnot read yet
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot read yet
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot read yet
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Cosmos-Reason2-2B

A small local model for reasoning over video and images in robotics, driving and warehouse scenes, returning points, boxes and timed events as JSON. The 4.9 GB file runs in Transformers or vLLM, though NVIDIA asks for 24 GB of GPU memory. Development has moved to Cosmos 3, and the gated licence is revocable.

Inkling 2 Small

Thinking Machines' newest open model, a 594B mixture-of-experts generalist with images in, several tool calls a turn and per-request thinking effort. The NVFP4 checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and no released runtime runs it yet, so today that means vLLM's or SGLang's own images, or Tinker and Together hosted. The use policy binds on download and can change.

Before you call either

Cosmos-Reason2-2B

  1. Accept the licence on the Hugging Face card with a signed-in account and set HF_TOKEN before downloading
  2. Serve it with vllm serve nvidia/Cosmos-Reason2-2B --max-model-len 16384 --media-io-kwargs '{"video": {"num_frames": -1}}' --reasoning-parser qwen3, keeping max-model-len between 8,192 and 16,384 as NVIDIA advises
  3. For local video or images, make a folder for them (mkdir -p media) and pass --allowed-local-media-path "$(pwd)/media", so the server can read only that folder, not everything under the directory you start it from
  4. Sample video at 4 fps and allow at least 4,096 output tokens so the reasoning isn't cut off
  5. For reasoning, add the card's instruction to answer with a think block and then the answer; leave it out for a direct reply
  6. Use NVIDIA's prompt files (prompts/*.yaml in nvidia-cosmos/cosmos-reason2) when you want JSON boxes, events or trajectories, and validate the JSON yourself
  7. Check its plans before a robot acts on them, since NVIDIA's own safety card warns of collision and manipulation risks

Inkling 2 Small

  1. No released runtime runs it yet. Serve the NVFP4 checkpoint from SGLang's dev-inkling-2-small image with the cookbook's recipe for your hardware, or from vLLM's vllm/vllm-openai:inkling-2-small image
  2. In vLLM pass --reasoning-parser inkling --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser inkling. In SGLang the tool-call parser is inkling2 and the reasoning parser inkling
  3. Transformers' main branch loads only thinkingmachines/Inkling-2-Small-MXFP8, the 622.8 GB checkpoint, and no release has the code yet
  4. Pass reasoning_effort as none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default), xhigh or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99
  5. Effort none conditions the model toward no reasoning but doesn't forbid it, and higher effort needs a larger max_tokens
  6. Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
  7. Images should be 40 to 4096 px a side. The model takes no audio, and the template raises an error for an audio part
  8. Use guided decoding or validate JSON yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  9. Without the hardware, call it on Tinker's OpenAI-compatible endpoint with a Tinker key, at $0.30 input and $1.00 output per million tokens as read on 6 November 2026
  10. Read the Model Acceptable Use Policy before deploying, it binds on download and bars some uses that are legal

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Cosmos-Reason2-2B or Inkling 2 Small?

Cosmos-Reason2-2B and Inkling 2 Small score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 59.5 (C) and 58.8 (C). Inkling 2 Small leads on risk, agent interface and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Cosmos-Reason2-2B or Inkling 2 Small

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