# Fireworks AI Inference vs Inkling 2 Small (slim)

> Fireworks AI Inference scores 69.3 (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/fireworks-inference-vs-inkling-2-small.md (~6,400 tokens) · this version ~3,130 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fireworks-inference-vs-inkling-2-small.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fireworks-inference-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)

Fireworks AI Inference scores 69.3 (B) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 52.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on maintenance & community. Both do llm inference.

- Fireworks AI Inference: B 69.3, rank #229 of 1354 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/fireworks-inference.min.md
- Inkling 2 Small: D 52.1, rank #899 of 1354 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inkling-2-small.min.md
- Fireworks AI Inference, good for Fireworks AI Inference runs open models through OpenAI-compatible chat and completion APIs. Ahead on Reliability, 70 against 30; Schema & documentation, 93 against 70; Agent ergonomics, 80 against 62; Security & auth, 77 against 57; Payments & pricing, 40 against 20; Transparency & trust, 69 against 64.
- 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. Ahead on Maintenance & community, 75 against 65. Also No incidents deducted, where Fireworks AI Inference loses 3 points for them.

| Category | Fireworks AI Inference | Inkling 2 Small |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 70 | 30 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 93 | 70 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 80 | 62 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 77 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 65 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 69 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Fireworks AI Inference | Inkling 2 Small |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model API |
| Vendor | Fireworks.ai, Inc. | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.fireworks.ai/inference/v1` | `https://tinker.thinkingmachines.dev/services/tinker-prod/oai/api/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service. The official Python SDK is Apache-2.0; served models retain their own licences. | 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 | 2026-10-27 | 2026-11-05 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | not read yet |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Popularity | 10 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 4.3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Fireworks AI Inference +40: Fireworks AI Inference 70 (Public status page at status.fireworks.ai with a component per serverless model (20). The history page, read on 1 November, lists 236 incidents from 3 August to 31 October, nearly all short degradations of a single serverless model. Two hit many serverless models at once. On 11 August a cloud provider outage was 'affecting many of our serverless and dedicated deployments', with five serverless components (GPT OSS 120B, MiniMax M3 and the three Kimi K3 endpoints) in partial outage from 17:15 to 20:55 UTC and again from 01:36 to 01:49 UTC on 12 August, resolved 13 August. On 14 October a cloud provider outage set 18 serverless components to degraded performance, GPT OSS 120B, Kimi K3 and GLM 5.3 among them, from 23:06 UTC, with requests to them that 'may fail', recovery 'across the board' at 00:59 UTC on 15 October and the incident resolved at 01:53. Each is an hour or more of errors across most of the serverless catalogue, so two majors. Two majors sit between the checklist's one major (10) and several (0), so 5, as deepseek-api, black-forest-labs and telnyx-voice are read (5). The 19 October check gave the same 5 because no 90-day history could be read. A 30 October incident on deployment creation, dedicated training and batch inference was still open on 1 November. Numeric adaptive ceilings by model size, 216M total prompt, 54M uncached prompt and 2.16M generated tokens a minute for Small models (15). The rate-limits page says to honour `Retry-After` on 429 and otherwise back off with jitter, and the reliability guide covers timeouts and retries (15). Reserved throughput is 'covered by a throughput SLA' with no figure published (5 of 10). Serverless is generally available (10). 20+5+15+15+5+10 = 70.); 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.)
- Schema & documentation, Fireworks AI Inference +23: Fireworks AI Inference 93 (Public chat and completion OpenAPI 3.1 at text-completion.openapi.yaml, re-read on 1 November (25). llms.txt with Markdown twins of every page (10). Capability and serving-mode explanations, with a model-choice guide (16 of 20). Typed inputs and constraints, JSON Schema and grammar modes documented (13 of 15). Examples and an error-codes page with resolutions (14 of 15). Versioned endpoints and a dated changelog, newest entry 27 October (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.)
- Security & auth, Fireworks AI Inference +20: Fireworks AI Inference 77 (Read by the HTTP API checklist, as for cerebras-inference and together-inference. Service accounts with API keys issued on their behalf, roles assigned at creation and changeable (30). An inference-user role can call models but not create or modify resources (20). No inference prompt-injection mitigation established (0). Enterprise audit logs with a REST API, and cost exports per API key (15). The data-security page states SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 42001, HIPAA support and regular penetration testing, with reports in a Vanta trust centre that renders only with JavaScript. fireworks.ai/.well-known/security.txt answered 404 on 1 November, as on 19 October, and no disclosure policy or bug bounty was found. That matches people-data-labs (12) and launchdarkly (12), which state SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 with no security.txt, disclosure policy or bounty, so the 20 the 19 October check gave is corrected (12). The terms (section 3.6) rule out training on customer content and inference has zero retention by default, recorded for reviewers and not scored on this checklist. 30+20+0+15+12 = 77.); Inkling 2 Small 57 (Platform readings are the tinker listing's. Revocable API keys from the console, with no per-key scopes found (20). Org, team and project permissions with no read-only role (5). The model returns its own completions, no third-party content (10). get_audit_log() for admins (15). security.txt with a reporting address and no stated acknowledgement time (7). For the model reading, Tinker's terms commit not to use Customer Content for training, recorded under transparency. 20 + 5 + 10 + 15 + 7 = 57.)
- Payments & pricing, Fireworks AI Inference +20: Fireworks AI Inference 40 (No machine payment protocol in the docs index or billing pages, re-read on 1 November (0). Public per-token prices by model and serving mode (20). The credits FAQ documents a $1 starter credit that runs without a payment method, after which the account is suspended until one is added (20). Account signup and credit purchases need a person (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.)
- Agent ergonomics, Fireworks AI Inference +18: Fireworks AI Inference 80 (Read by the HTTP API checklist, as for cerebras-inference and together-inference. Compact model API with bounded output, `max_tokens` and streaming (25). Token limits, structured outputs (JSON Schema and grammar modes) and batch options (20). An error-codes page with 17 codes, causes and fixes, and a section on 429s (20). Retry guidance without a general deduplication guarantee (5 of 20). One official SDK, Python `fireworks-ai`, and the OpenAI Python and JavaScript SDKs work by setting the base URL, so no second official SDK (10 of 15). Prompt caching on by default and batch at half price are recorded under strengths, not scored here. 25+20+20+5+10 = 80.); 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.)
- Maintenance & community, Inkling 2 Small +10: Fireworks AI Inference 65 (Read by the HTTP API checklist, as for cerebras-inference and together-inference. Rune 26B-A4B joined serverless on 27 October, five days before this check (30). Dated changelog entries several times a month, among them 27, 21, 19 and 18 October (20). Support replies not tested (0). Official Python SDK current, v1.2.30 tagged on 21 October after eleven tags from 1 October, no official TypeScript SDK (15). Dependency health not audited (0). The serverless overview promises 'at least 2 weeks advance notice' before a model is removed, and the 27 August removals were posted the day they took effect (see the deduction). 30+20+0+15+0 = 65.); Inkling 2 Small 75 (Model reading. Released 5 November 2026 (30). Churn and notice in place of release counts: Inkling, Inkling-Small (30 July) and Inkling 2 Small in about four months, and a deprecations page with dated retirements and a promise to 'aim to give advance notice' by email, with no stated period, per the tinker listing (10 of 20). A public changelog and a support address and Discord, per the tinker listing (10 of 15). Current official SDKs, Tinker's Python SDK and the OpenAI-compatible endpoint (15). SDK and cookbook CI, per the tinker listing (10). 30 + 10 + 10 + 15 + 10 = 75.)