Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Inkling 2 Small vs Laguna S 2.1
Laguna S 2.1 scores 61 (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 risk 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
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 55
- Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 41
Watch for
The smaller checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and Thinking Machines says 500 GB of GPU memory
Best for Agents doing long coding sessions on a 128 GB machine or a multi-GPU server that want a permissive licence and a 1M context.
Ahead on
- Reach, 75 against 40
Watch for
No reply from Poolside to any of 34 discussions, many of them reports about thinking and tool calls
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 Laguna S 2.1 +35
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.
Laguna S 2.1 75
Memory 10 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Ollama's 66 GB MLX nvfp4, which needs 96 GB with a fifth added and fits our 128 GB reference machine. Runtimes 25, released llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers all run the laguna architecture. Builds 15, Poolside publishes FP8, INT4, NVFP4, MLX and GGUF builds. Terms 10, OpenMDW-1.1 is permissive but not OSI-approved. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 5, Poolside's own API serves it and Featherless AI hosts it, though Poolside's OpenRouter endpoints have expired.
Documentation and upkeep Inkling 2 Small +26
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.
Laguna S 2.1 41
Model card 11 of 20, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are on the card, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't. Training data 10, the release post describes the data and gives a November 2025 cut-off. Last change 15, 25 August 2026, 70 days back. Responsiveness 0, Poolside answered none of the 34 discussions. Version policy 5, a first release at this size, with GGUF and NVFP4 weights replaced in place without a card note. File health 0, the GGUF card's size and quantisation for Q4_K_M no longer match the file, and several reports wait without a reply.
Risk Inkling 2 Small +10
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.
Laguna S 2.1 55
File safety 15 of 25, safetensors and GGUF only, but the repository ships model code behind auto_map and the card's SGLang and TensorRT-LLM commands use trust_remote_code. Provenance 15, the verified poolside organisation, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 5, general cautions only. Licence risk 15, OpenMDW-1.1 has no use policy, threshold or revocation clause. Security programme 5, a signed security.txt and a security contact on the card, with no public advisories found.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Inkling 2 Small | Laguna S 2.1 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 40 | 75 | Laguna S 2.1 +35 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 65 | 55 | Inkling 2 Small +10 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 67 | 41 | Inkling 2 Small +26 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 58.8/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Inkling 2 Small | Laguna S 2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Thinking Machines Lab | Poolside |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | OpenMDW-1.1 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-12 | 2026-08-19 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-07-21 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-07-21 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | yes |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.3/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Laguna S 2.1
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
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.
Laguna S 2.1
A strong coding and agent cousin for long sessions, with 8B active parameters and a 1M-token context. At 4-bit it needs a 96 to 128 GB machine, tight on a 128 GB one. The main risks are that nobody at Poolside answers its many reports, there are no safety results, and a build card misdescribes its file.
Before you call either
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
Laguna S 2.1
- Quickest start is
ollama run laguna-s-2.1, 96 GB for the default Q4_K_M, or the 66 GB nvfp4 tag on Apple Silicon - On our reference machine try
llama-server -hf poolside/Laguna-S-2.1-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 65536, from a llama.cpp release with the laguna architecture (b11772 has it). The 96 GB file leaves little room for context in 107.4 GB - With vLLM or SGLang use
--tool-call-parser poolside_v1 --reasoning-parser poolside_v1, and with TensorRT-LLM--tool_parser poolside_v1 --reasoning_parser laguna - Thinking is on by default in the template, pass
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingfalse to turn it off, and keepreasoning_contentfrom earlier turns - The GGUFs ship set to 262,144 tokens. For 1M with llama.cpp add
--ctx-size 1048576 --rope-scaling yarn --rope-scale 128 --yarn-orig-ctx 8192, which Poolside says can cost quality - Sampling per the generation config is temperature 1.0 and top_k 20, and Poolside suggests temperature 0.7 and top_p 0.95 at 1M
- Expect occasional tool-schema slips in harnesses unlike Poolside's own, and validate JSON arguments, which Poolside lists as known limitations
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Inkling 2 Small or Laguna S 2.1?
Laguna S 2.1 scores 61 (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 risk and documentation and upkeep.
Other comparisons with Inkling 2 Small or Laguna S 2.1
- Agents-A1-4B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Agents-A1-4B vs Laguna S 2.1
- Apertus v1.5 8B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Apertus v1.5 8B vs Laguna S 2.1
- Apodex-1.1-mini vs Inkling 2 Small
- Apodex-1.1-mini vs Laguna S 2.1
- Arete-27B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Arete-27B vs Laguna S 2.1
- BigBang-v1 vs Inkling 2 Small
- BigBang-v1 vs Laguna S 2.1
- Carbon-X vs Inkling 2 Small
- Carbon-X vs Laguna S 2.1
- Cola2 vs Inkling 2 Small
- Cola2 vs Laguna S 2.1
- Cosmos-Reason2-2B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Cosmos-Reason2-2B vs Laguna S 2.1
- Darwin-36B-Opus vs Inkling 2 Small
- Darwin-36B-Opus vs Laguna S 2.1
- DeepSeek-V3.2 vs Inkling 2 Small
- DeepSeek-V3.2 vs Laguna S 2.1
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Inkling 2 Small
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Laguna S 2.1
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs Inkling 2 Small
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs Laguna S 2.1
- Devstral Small 2 vs Inkling 2 Small
- Devstral Small 2 vs Laguna S 2.1
- DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs Laguna S 2.1
- EXAONE 4.5 33B vs Inkling 2 Small
- EXAONE 4.5 33B vs Laguna S 2.1
- Gemma 4 12B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 12B IT vs Laguna S 2.1
- Gemma 4 26B A4B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 26B A4B IT vs Laguna S 2.1
- Gemma 4 31B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 31B IT vs Laguna S 2.1
- Gemma 4 E2B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 E2B IT vs Laguna S 2.1
- Gemma 4 E4B IT vs Inkling 2 Small
- Gemma 4 E4B IT vs Laguna S 2.1
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Inkling 2 Small
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Laguna S 2.1
- GLM-4.7-Flash vs Inkling 2 Small
- GLM-4.7-Flash vs Laguna S 2.1
- GLM-5.3-Flash vs Inkling 2 Small
- GLM-5.3-Flash vs Laguna S 2.1
- GLM-5.3 vs Inkling 2 Small
- GLM-5.3 vs Laguna S 2.1
- gpt-oss-120b vs Inkling 2 Small
- gpt-oss-120b vs Laguna S 2.1
- gpt-oss-20b vs Inkling 2 Small
- gpt-oss-20b vs Laguna S 2.1
- Granite 4.2 30B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Granite 4.2 30B vs Laguna S 2.1
- Granite 4.2 3B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Granite 4.2 3B vs Laguna S 2.1
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Laguna S 2.1
- Hy-Memory-30B-A3B vs Inkling 2 Small
- Hy-Memory-30B-A3B vs Laguna S 2.1
- Hy3 vs Inkling 2 Small
- Hy3 vs Laguna S 2.1
- Inkling 2 Small vs Inkling-Small
- Inkling 2 Small vs InternVL3.5-GPT-OSS-20B-A4B-Preview
- 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 XS 2.1
- Inkling 2 Small vs LBS-27B
- 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
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiniCPM-o 4.5
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiniCPM5-2B
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiniMax-M2.5
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiniMax-M2.7
- Inkling 2 Small vs MiniMax-M3.1-Flash
- Inkling 2 Small vs Mistral Large 4
- Inkling 2 Small vs Muse Glimmer 30B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Nanbeige4.2-3B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Nanbeige4.3-33B
- Inkling 2 Small vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB
- Inkling 2 Small vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Nemotron 3 Nano 4B
- 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
- Inkling 2 Small vs Ornith-1.5-122B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Ornith-1.5-397B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Ornith-1.5-9B
- Inkling 2 Small vs OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
- Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507
- 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-Small vs Laguna S 2.1
- Inkling vs Inkling 2 Small
- Inkling vs Laguna S 2.1
- InternVL3.5-GPT-OSS-20B-A4B-Preview vs Laguna S 2.1
- Kimi K3.1 Pro vs Laguna S 2.1
- Kimi K3 vs Laguna S 2.1
- Kolibri-1 vs Laguna S 2.1
- Kronos vs Laguna S 2.1
- Laguna M.1 vs Laguna S 2.1
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Laguna XS 2.1
- Laguna S 2.1 vs LBS-27B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs LFM2.5-2.6B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs LFM3-1.7B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs LFM3-Audio-2B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs LFM3-Omni-2B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs LFM3-VL-2B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Ling-3.0-tiny
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Ling-3.1-flash-1019
- Laguna S 2.1 vs LongCat-2.5
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiniCPM-o 4.5
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiniCPM-V 4.7 1B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiniCPM5-2B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiniMax-M2.5
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiniMax-M2.7
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiniMax-M3.1-Flash
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Mistral Large 4
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Muse Glimmer 30B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Nanbeige4.2-3B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Nanbeige4.3-33B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Nemotron 3 Nano 4B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B Reasoning
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs North Mini Code 1.0
- Laguna S 2.1 vs occamy-1.0
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Olmo 3 7B Think
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Ornith-1.5-122B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Ornith-1.5-397B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Ornith-1.5-9B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs OTel-2.0-LLM-31B-IT
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen-AgentWorld-35B-A3B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.5-0.8B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.5-122B-A10B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.5-2B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.5-4B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.5-9B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.6-27B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.8-27B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-Coder-Next
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-VL-2B-Instruct
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-VL-32B-Instruct
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Recursive Flint
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Ripple-65B Preview
- Laguna S 2.1 vs SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview
- Laguna S 2.1 vs SmolLM3-3B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Spark-X2.6-4B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Step 3.7 Flash
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- Laguna S 2.1 vs ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
- Laguna S 2.1 vs Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2
- Laguna S 2.1 vs WeVisOne-VL-2B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs WeVisOne-VL-4B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs ZAYA1-8B
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/inkling-2-small-vs-laguna-s-2-1.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/inkling-2-small.json·/api/v1/tools/laguna-s-2-1.json - From a terminal
anchor compare inkling-2-small laguna-s-2-1(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "inkling-2-small", "b": "laguna-s-2-1"}at/mcp, no key