Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
GLM-4.5-Air vs Inkling 2 Small
GLM-4.5-Air scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on 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
Best for Agents with two to four datacentre GPUs, or a provider account, who want a permissively licensed English and Chinese tool-calling model with wide runtime support.
Ahead on
- Reach, 70 against 40
Watch for
Z.ai's smallest build is FP8 at about 135 GB in use, with no 4-bit build of its own
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
- Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 38
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.
Reach GLM-4.5-Air +30
GLM-4.5-Air 70
Memory 5 of 30, Z.ai's smallest build is FP8 at 112.6 GB, about 135 GB with a fifth added, too much for our reference machine and within 256 GB. Runtimes 25 (the cap), released llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers run it, and Ollama 0.40.14 (2 November 2026) builds llama.cpp b11963, which has the glm4moe architecture, as kolibri-1 and occamy-1-0 are credited for Ollama's pin. Ollama and LM Studio have no library entry. Builds 10, one quantised build (FP8). Terms 15, MIT with nothing added. Download 10, no gate. Hosted 5, Z.ai and Novita serve it on Hugging Face.
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.
Documentation and upkeep Inkling 2 Small +29
GLM-4.5-Air 38
Model card 8 of 20, intended use, parameters and languages only. Training data 5, the technical report describes the sources and filtering with no cut-off. Last change 5, the weights' files date from August 2025 (Hub head a24ceef6, 11 August 2025, re-read on 4 November) and Z.ai's GitHub repository last changed on 1 February 2026, 276 days before this check, so within a year. Responsiveness 10, Z.ai answered 4 of the 14 questions, all in the first three days, recounted by script on 4 November. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 5, the config and tokenizer disagree on the context and a tokenisation report has no reply.
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.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | GLM-4.5-Air | Inkling 2 Small | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 70 | 40 | GLM-4.5-Air +30 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 65 | 65 | even |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 38 | 67 | Inkling 2 Small +29 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 60.3/100 | C 58.8/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | GLM-4.5-Air | Inkling 2 Small |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Z.ai (Zhipu AI) | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2025-08-11 | 2026-11-12 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |
How the scores have moved
Verdicts
GLM-4.5-Air
An English and Chinese mixture-of-experts model for agent, coding and tool-calling work, with switchable thinking and released support in llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers. It needs about 135 GB for Z.ai's FP8 build, two to four H100s by Z.ai's figures, and Z.ai and Novita host it. Its files date from August 2025, with no Z.ai reply since July 2025.
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
GLM-4.5-Air
- Z.ai's FP8 recipe is
python3 -m sglang.launch_server --model-path zai-org/GLM-4.5-Air-FP8 --tp-size 4 --tool-call-parser glm45 --reasoning-parser glm45, and 2 H100s are enough below the full 128K context - Use the glm45 tool and reasoning parsers for this model, the glm47 parser in Z.ai's current README is for GLM-4.7
- Thinking is on by default, pass
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingfalse for short tasks, which makes the template add /nothink and an empty think block - Declare tools in OpenAI style, and the template renders arguments as arg_key and arg_value pairs that the parser turns back into JSON
- Keep prompts under 128,000 tokens, the tokenizer config's limit, though config.json allows 131,072
- Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented for the weights
Inkling 2 Small
- 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
- In vLLM pass
--reasoning-parser inkling --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser inkling. In SGLang the tool-call parser isinkling2and the reasoning parserinkling - Transformers' main branch loads only thinkingmachines/Inkling-2-Small-MXFP8, the 622.8 GB checkpoint, and no release has the code yet
- Pass
reasoning_effortas none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default), xhigh or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99 - Effort none conditions the model toward no reasoning but doesn't forbid it, and higher effort needs a larger max_tokens
- Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
- Images should be 40 to 4096 px a side. The model takes no audio, and the template raises an error for an audio part
- Use guided decoding or validate JSON yourself, since structured output isn't documented
- 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
- 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, GLM-4.5-Air or Inkling 2 Small?
GLM-4.5-Air scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on documentation and upkeep.
Other comparisons with GLM-4.5-Air or Inkling 2 Small
- Agents-A1-4B vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Agents-A1-4B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Apertus v1.5 8B vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Apertus v1.5 8B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Apodex-1.1-mini vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Apodex-1.1-mini vs Inkling 2 Small
- Arete-27B vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Arete-27B vs Inkling 2 Small
- BigBang-v1 vs GLM-4.5-Air
- BigBang-v1 vs Inkling 2 Small
- Carbon-X vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Carbon-X vs Inkling 2 Small
- Cola2 vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Cola2 vs Inkling 2 Small
- Cosmos-Reason2-2B vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Cosmos-Reason2-2B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Darwin-36B-Opus vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Darwin-36B-Opus vs Inkling 2 Small
- DeepSeek-V3.2 vs GLM-4.5-Air
- DeepSeek-V3.2 vs Inkling 2 Small
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs GLM-4.5-Air
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Inkling 2 Small
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs GLM-4.5-Air
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs Inkling 2 Small
- Devstral Small 2 vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Devstral Small 2 vs Inkling 2 Small
- DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs GLM-4.5-Air
- DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- EXAONE 4.5 33B vs GLM-4.5-Air
- EXAONE 4.5 33B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 12B IT vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Gemma 4 12B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 26B A4B IT vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Gemma 4 26B A4B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 31B IT vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Gemma 4 31B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 E2B IT vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Gemma 4 E2B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 E4B IT vs GLM-4.5-Air
- Gemma 4 E4B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- GLM-4.5-Air vs GLM-4.7-Flash
- GLM-4.5-Air vs GLM-5.3
- GLM-4.5-Air vs GLM-5.3-Flash
- GLM-4.5-Air vs gpt-oss-120b
- GLM-4.5-Air vs gpt-oss-20b
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Granite 4.2 30B
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Granite 4.2 3B
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Granite 4.2 8B
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Hy-Memory-30B-A3B
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Hy3
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Inkling
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Inkling-Small
- GLM-4.5-Air vs InternVL3.5-GPT-OSS-20B-A4B-Preview
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Kimi K3
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Kimi K3.1 Pro
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Kolibri-1
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Kronos
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- GLM-5.3-Flash vs Inkling 2 Small
- GLM-5.3 vs Inkling 2 Small
- gpt-oss-120b vs Inkling 2 Small
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- Granite 4.2 30B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Granite 4.2 3B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Inkling 2 Small
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- Inkling 2 Small vs Kimi K3
- Inkling 2 Small vs Kimi K3.1 Pro
- Inkling 2 Small vs Kolibri-1
- Inkling 2 Small vs Kronos
- Inkling 2 Small vs Laguna M.1
- Inkling 2 Small vs Laguna S 2.1
- Inkling 2 Small vs Laguna XS 2.1
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- Inkling 2 Small vs LFM2.5-2.6B
- Inkling 2 Small vs LFM3-1.7B
- Inkling 2 Small vs LFM3-Audio-2B
- Inkling 2 Small vs LFM3-Omni-2B
- Inkling 2 Small vs LFM3-VL-2B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Ling-3.0-tiny
- Inkling 2 Small vs Ling-3.1-flash-1019
- Inkling 2 Small vs LongCat-2.5
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
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- Inkling 2 Small vs MiniMax-M3.1-Flash
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- Inkling 2 Small vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B
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- Inkling 2 Small vs Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning
- Inkling 2 Small vs Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B
- Inkling 2 Small vs North Mini Code 1.0
- Inkling 2 Small vs occamy-1.0
- Inkling 2 Small vs Olmo 3 7B Think
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- Inkling 2 Small vs Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B
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- Inkling 2 Small vs Ornith-1.5-9B
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- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
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- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.5-0.8B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.5-122B-A10B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.5-2B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.5-4B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.5-9B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.6-27B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.8-27B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-Coder-Next
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-VL-2B-Instruct
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-VL-32B-Instruct
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2
- Inkling 2 Small vs Recursive Flint
- Inkling 2 Small vs Ripple-65B Preview
- Inkling 2 Small vs SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview
- Inkling 2 Small vs SmolLM3-3B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Spark-X2.6-4B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Step 3.7 Flash
- Inkling 2 Small vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- Inkling 2 Small vs ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
- Inkling 2 Small vs Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2
- Inkling 2 Small vs WeVisOne-VL-2B
- Inkling 2 Small vs WeVisOne-VL-4B
- Inkling 2 Small vs ZAYA1-8B
- Inkling vs Inkling 2 Small
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/glm-4-5-air-vs-inkling-2-small.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/glm-4-5-air.json·/api/v1/tools/inkling-2-small.json - From a terminal
anchor compare glm-4-5-air inkling-2-small(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "glm-4-5-air", "b": "inkling-2-small"}at/mcp, no key