# Inkling 2 Small vs Kronos (slim)

> Inkling 2 Small scores 58.8 (C) to Kronos's 55.2 (C) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inkling-2-small-vs-kronos.md (~9,300 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inkling-2-small-vs-kronos.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inkling-2-small-vs-kronos
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-12
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Inkling 2 Small scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Kronos leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Inkling 2 Small: C 58.8, rank #102 of 161 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inkling-2-small.min.md
- Kronos: C 55.2, rank #123 of 161 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kronos.min.md
- Inkling 2 Small, good 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 50; Agent interface, 85 against 60; Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 61.
- Kronos, good for Agents that need a quick local forecast or synthetic sample of a candlestick series on modest hardware, for research or as one input among others. Ahead on Reach, 55 against 40.

| Category | Inkling 2 Small | Kronos |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 40 | 55 |
| Risk (20%) | 65 | 50 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 60 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 67 | 61 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Inkling 2 Small | Kronos |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Thinking Machines Lab | Yu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua University |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Last release | 2026-11-12 | 2026-04-13 |
| Popularity | none | 43k stars |

Why the edge:
- Agent interface, Inkling 2 Small +25: Inkling 2 Small 85 (Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository.); Kronos 60 (Read for a forecasting model, the tool-calling, trained tool calling and structured-output lines stand for what it takes and returns.)
- Reach, Kronos +15: 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.); Kronos 55 (Memory 30, the publisher's Kronos-mini with its tokeniser is 0.03 GB and even Kronos-base is 0.43 GB in FP32. Runtimes 0, it runs only through the publisher's o…)
- Risk, Inkling 2 Small +15: Inkling 2 Small 65 (File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code to run.); Kronos 50 (File safety 15, safetensors only, but the only documented loading path is the publisher's Python package in place of a runtime.)
- Documentation and upkeep, Inkling 2 Small +6: Inkling 2 Small 67 (Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off.); Kronos 61 (Model card 11, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't.)